LIBRARY OF CONGRESS. 

Chap........ Copyright No. 

Shelt._i___.X- £ 



UNITED STATES OF AMERICA. 



THE TEN LAWS: 
a Jfountratton fat iftuman Sorfrtp. 



EDWARD BEECHER MASON, 

MINISTER OF 11 THE CHURCH ON THE HILL," BRUNSWICK, ME 
AUTHOR OF "SERMONS FOR THE MONDAY CLUB." 



9 



NEW YORK: 
A. D. F. RANDOLPH COMPANY, 
103 Fifth Avenue. 




WO COPIES RECEIVED 



A 



The Lib* 

WASHINGTON 



Copyright, 1897, 
By The A. D. F. Randolph Company. 



John Wilson and Son. Cambridge, U.S.A. 



TO 

&fje Cfjurcfjes foijere 5 fjabe IHmtsterrtJ 

THIS BOOK IS DEDICATED. 



CONTENTS. 



Page 

I. The Ten Laws 3 

II. The Ten Laws 15 

III. The First Law 29 

IV. The Second Law 45 

V. The Third Law 61 

VI. The Fourth Law 79 

VII. The Fifth Law 97 

VIII. The Sixth Law 113 

IX. The Seventh Law 129 

X. The Eighth Law 147 

XI. The Ninth Law ..." 165 

XII. The Tenth Law 183 



I. 

€f)e Zen %ato)$. 



I. 



THE TEN LAWS. • 

Thou knowest the commandments. — Luke xviii. 20. 

THE ten laws, known to us as the ten com- 
mandments, found in the twentieth chapter 
of Exodus, are very old. When Columbus dis- 
covered America, in 1492, they were very old. 
When William the Conqueror began his Norman 
invasion of England, they were very old. When 
J ulius Caesar landed on British shores, they were 
very old. When Christ spoke to this young man, 
they were very old. When Eome was founded, 
more than seven centuries before Christ, these 
ten commandments were still very old. In early 
Grecian times, when Solon wrote his laws, these 
commandments were venerable with age. They 
were ancient laws when given by Moses. We 
must go back to primitive times, when Assyria 
and Babylon were young, when Egypt and China 
were framing their laws, and Abram was living 
in Ur of the Chaldees, to come anywhere near 
the early morning of human history in which 
these ten laws were written. They were written 



4 



THE TEN LAWS. 



on the human heart. They began with man, or 
are coeval with man, as laws of his beingo 

These ten laws are very new. They belong to our 
own times. We have but to lay our ears against 
the solid rocks of the earth, or lift up our eyes to 
the glowing stars in the sky, and we shall hear 
murmuring among the rocks, and chiming among 
the heavenly spheres, a voice which says, " Thou 
shalt have no other gods before me ; thou shalt 
not bow down to them, nor serve them." We 
have but to consider the sun, coming forth as a 
bridegroom from his chamber, and the moon, in 
her appointed seasons, in order to " remember 
the Sabbath day, to keep it holy." We have 
but to look at man in his home, in the State, and 
in society to be conscious of a still, small voice 
whispering to us, " Honor thy father and thy 
mother; thou shalt not kill; thou shalt not 
steal ; thou shalt not commit adultery ; thou shalt 
not bear false witness against thy neighbor." 
These are very new. They concern us to-day 
and belong to these times as much as though 
written yesterday. Without them the world 
could not exist, and men would be but savage 
animals. 

Fragments, echoes, and traditions of these ten 
laws are to be found in all countries and among 
all nations. Wherever they came from and how- 
ever they came, it is certain that they have come, 



THE TEN LAWS. 



5 



and that many nations have portions of them. It 
is necessary to refer only to the Buddhist deca- 
logue. The ten laws of Buddha are as follows : 
1. Not to kill; 2. Not to steal; 3. Not to 
commit adultery ; 4. Not to lie ; 5. Not to get 
intoxicated ; 6. To abstain from unseasonable 
meals ; 7. To abstain from public spectacles ; 
8. To abstain from expensive dresses ; 9. Not 
to have a large bed ; 10. Not to receive silver 
or gold. One of two things is evident, — either 
these teachers in other lands had learned some- 
thing from Moses, or the same voice which spoke 
to him spoke also to them. 

Does not the same voice speak to all of us ? 
Are there not echoes in each soul, as well as 
among the nations, of the ten words heard from 
Sinai ? These words belong to life. They ex- 
press life. They make life possible, and are the 
solid foundations upon which all good and true 
and happy living rests. They are written on 
tables of stone ; on the rocks beneath our feet, 
and among the stars over our heads. They are 
written on the leaves of creation, and worked 
into the very structure of social order and human 
existence. Without them there would be anarchy 
and a reign of terror. They keep the earth 
wholesome. 

We are not obliged to go to a book to find 
them. There is indeed a book, — an authorized 



6 



THE TEN LAWS. 



edition of them, — upon which we cannot, how- 
ever, print, as publishers sometimes do, on the 
titlepages of their books, "All rights reserved," for 
they are also written elsewhere ; in many places, 
The covenant made long ago — " I will put my 
laws into their mind, and write them in their 
hearts " — is fulfilled. No man can diligently 
consider his own heart and conscience without 
finding written there, more or less legibly, these 
divine and changeless laws. 

" God is not dumb, that he should speak no more; 
If thou hast wanderings in the wilderness 
And find'st not Sinai, 't is thy soul is poor ; 
There towers the mountain of the voice, no less, 
Which whoso seeks shall find ; but he who bends, 
Intent on manna still, and mortal ends, 
Sees it not, neither hears its thundered lore." 

God is always speaking to us, in language 
which can easily be understood. He is speaking 
out of our own hearts ; out of the structure of 
society ; even out of the tissues and organs of the 
physical body, and making the air we breathe 
a vocal utterance of his eternal mind and will. 
A Greek poet has finely said that "laws are 
neither of to-day nor yesterday, but live for- 
ever, since immemorial time." 

These ten laws are an abstract and summary 
of human conduct and righteousness. Whoso 
dashes himself against them is dashed to pieces. 



THE TEN LAWS. 7 

It is idle to talk of their passing away. When 
they pass away, the heavens and the earth will 
pass away. Only as they are revered, observed, 
and obeyed, can there be social order, national 
stability, domestic happiness, or individual peace 
and prosperity. 

That some stupendous natural or national con- 
vulsion attended the giving of these laws it is 
almost impossible to doubt. The impression 
left upon Jewish thought, which expressed itself 
ages afterwards in their literature through poets 
and prophets, can be accounted for only on the 
supposition that some awful scene was witnessed 
by the nation from the foot of their sacred moun- 
tain. The rocks of Sinai shook and trembled; 
flames flashed from its summit ; a thick black 
drapery of moving clouds and darkness veiled 
it from head to foot, while from out of the dark- 
ness came a sound as of the voice of God 
speaking to them, and filling their hearts with 
terror, as the reverberating thunder-peals broke 
again and again over their camp, and rolled far 
away into the desert. 

But the law that was given is more important 
than the convulsion which accompanied its giv- 
ing. The divine rule which regulates human 
life does not depend upon the nature of a 
tornado, which raged and swept round the crags 
of Sinai. To believe and obey the moral law 



8 THE TEN LAWS. 



is better than to know the mysteries of a shak- 
ing mountain and a naming sky. We accept 
these ten words of God, not because of a natural 
convulsion which happened ages ago on the 
other side of the sea, but because we find them 
written in our minds and on our hearts, and bear- 
ing the unmistakable stamp of a divine origin. 

In the deep peace which comes to a mourner's 
breast ; in the sharp pang of an aroused con- 
science, which gnaws like a deathless worm ; in 
the glare of conviction, which, like a lightning 
flash, makes all our sins suddenly visible ; and in 
the sweet, holy calm of repentance and forgive- 
ness, — we hear again, and more impressively, the 
voice of God, which speaks to us and says, Thou 
shalt have no other gods before me ; thou shalt 
not make unto thee any graven image ; remember 
the Sabbath day to keep it holy ; honor thy father 
and mother; kill not; steal not; commit no 
adultery, and speak no false witness against 
thy neighbor. 

Whatever is to be said about the agitation of a 
mountain, this much about the moral law is to be 
said with Eichard Hooker : " Of law there can be 
no less acknowledged than that her seat is the 
bosom of God, her voice the harmony of the 
world. All things in heaven and earth do her 
homage, the very least as feeling her care, and 
the greatest as not exempted from her power. 



THE TEN LAWS. 



9 



Both angels and men, and creatures of what 
condition soever, each in different sort and meas- 
ure, yet all with uniform consent, admitting her 
as the mother of their peace and joy." 

As God is everywhere, so law is everywhere. 
We can never escape from her presence, though 
we go up into heaven, or down into hell, or out 
into the uttermost parts of the sea. She is 
" omnipresent like the Deity." We can never 
think too much, nor remind ourselves too often, 
that God's moral law is not an afterthought, a 
statutory enactment or decree coming from God 
and the councils of heaven, but that it is the 
created nature of things, a principle or mode of 
existence wrought at first into the creature by 
the Creator. It is written, not alone on the pages 
of a book, but also, and first, on the fleshly tables 
of the human heart. It is built into the physical 
frame of the human race. 

When God built the heavens and the earth, 
he did not shape worlds and suns and planets 
like toys, string them together in orders and 
systems, and then afterward make the law of 
gravitation, according to which they were to 
move in orbits ; but the law of gravitation was 
made when the worlds were made, and was made 
in the worlds, a part of the worlds, and was an at- 
tribute or quality of matter, out of which worlds 
are formed. So when he made man, he did not 



10 



THE TEN LAWS. 



fashion him without laws or modes of being, and 
then write a code of laws for him ; but he 
fashioned him with laws and modes of being. 
These laws are in himself. Every one of the 
commandments is in man, and finds its justi- 
fication in man's constitution. 

The difference between physical law and moral 
law, the law of planets and the law of reasoning 
men, is, that men can break away from their laws 
and worlds cannot. If worlds and planets could 
break away from their laws, there would be con- 
fusion and destruction in the skies, and because 
men have broken away from their laws, there is 
sin, misery, and death in the world. In so far 
as men kill and steal, and bear false witness, 
and fail to honor their fathers and mothers, and 
set up for themselves false gods, they fail to be 
men, and fail to live as they were meant to live, 
or according to the laws written upon their own 
hearts and consciences. 

All these laws are reducible to one. There 
is but one law, and that law is the law of love. 
Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy 
heart and soul and mind and strength, and thy 
neighbor as thyself. As light, heat, and motion are 
only different modes of some one unknown force, 
so all the ten laws are only special forms of the 
one great law of love. Hence it is exactly true, 
as James says, if we offend in one point, we 



THE TEN LAWS. 



11 



are guilty of all. If I steal from my neighbor, I 
have broken the law of love, as certainly as 
though I had killed him. The ten laws are one 
law. They are ten links in one chain, and when 
one link is broken, the chain is broken. 

One leak is enough to sink a vessel. One stone 
taken from an arch ruins the arch, and one wil- 
ful trespass against my brother breaks the whole 
law of love to my brother. 

The law is broad. It reaches every sin. 
Nothing escapes it. It has to do with action. 
We say that God looks on the heart, and so he 
does, but he looks also on the hand. He knows 
what the hand is doing, and he cares what the 
hand is doing. The law of God is a law for the 
hand and the foot and the tongue and the eye. It 
is a law for every member. It goes deep. It 
reaches the thoughts and intents of the heart. 
It is like a sword piercing to the dividing asunder 
of soul and spirit. 

Human law pauses on the (Jeed, and ought to, 
but divine law goes to the quick, and searches 
motives. A malicious feeling is not so bad as a 
malicious action, but it is bad and is judged by 
the law. An envious and evil spirit is not so bad 
as envious and evil conduct, but it is still bad, 
and is judged by the law. The Jews said, Thou 
shalt not kill, and whosoever shall kill shall be 
in danger of the judgment ; but Christ said, 



12 



THE TEN LAWS. 



" Whosoever is angry with his brother without 
cause shall be in danger of the judgment." 

Divine law is supreme. It admits no rival, 
makes no concession, tolerates no deviation from 
the line and the plummet. Fathers, mothers, 
magistrates, and civil authorities are to be obeyed 
until they set themselves against God and right. 
Then we must refuse to obey, and take the con- 
sequences, — refuse to bow down to the golden 
images which they have set up, even at the risk 
of being cast into the burning fiery furnace. 
There is no choice. The law of God is supreme. 
Because God is greater than man, wiser than man, 
better than man, he must be obeyed rather than 
man. 

The law of righteousness is as unyielding as 
granite. You can break it, but you cannot bend 
it. It makes no concessions or compromises, and 
accepts nothing short of perfect obedience. It 
could not remain a perfect law, and at the same 
time lower its standard, for then it would cease 
to be perfect. It can abate no jot or tittle. 

This law works well. It makes those who 
keep it happy and healthy. It is wholesome 
law. It is the harmony of the world. Those 
who depart from it have sorrow and misery. 
Those who keep it have joy and happiness. The 
way of the transgressor is hard. In the keeping 
of the law there is great reward. There is 



THE TEN LAWS. 13 

perfect happiness in heaven, because all love and 
obey the law; there is perfect misery in hell, 
because all hate and despise the law. To obey 
is heaven; to disobey is hell. 

If the fact that a law works well is proof of 
its wisdom and goodness, then we have conclusive 
demonstration of the wisdom and goodness of 
the divine moral law, for it always works well. 
It is the inexhaustible fountain of goodness and 
strength. 

In a single word, this law is love, "All's 
love, and all's law," — love to God and man. 
The law is not a terror, but a rapture. There is 
as much love in the ten commandments as in the 
Sermon on the Mount. A father is as kind when 
he bids his child keep out of the fire as when he 
welcomes him into the shelter and sympathy of 
home. The same voice speaks from Sinai and 
Calvary. The same hand that wrote on the 
tables of stone was nailed to the cross, — the 
hand of love. There is not one of the ten 
commandments which does not forbid men harm- 
ing themselves or others. There is not one of 
them which is not most kind and benevolent. 
They enjoin the things we ought to do, and pro- 
hibit the things we ought not to do. He who 
loves his neighbor, will neither steal from him, 
nor traduce him, nor kill him, nor dishonor him, 
nor swear away his property, or life, or liberty. 



14 



THE TEN LAWS. 



Love is the fulfilling of the law. Love teaches a 
man to delight in doing everything which the law 
requires. 

This law does not advise us, but commands us. 
It says "thou shalt " and "thou shalt not." It 
is not a curiosity. It is not for speculation and 
theory, but it is to be obeyed and practised. It can 
never become obsolete till man becomes obsolete. 
It is the law of life. By taking heed thereto, a 
young man can cleanse his way. 

We should teach these laws to our children, 
and know them ourselves. When the deca- 
logue was given, God said, "And these words 
which I command thee this day shall be in thy 
heart. And thou shalt teach them diligently to 
thy children ; and shalt talk of them when thou 
sittest in thy house, and when thou walkest by 
the way ; when thou liest down and when thou 
risest up." Children so taught and trained in 
the holy law shall have a divine blessing resting 
upon them, both coming in and going out ; their 
days shall be long in the land. 



II. 

THE TEN LAWS. 

Thou knowest the commandments. — Luke xviii. 20. 

WE have seen that these ten laws are very 
old ; that they are very new ; that frag- 
ments and echoes of them are found among all 
nations; that they are a summary of good and 
righteous conduct in man ; that they are in force 
everywhere and always ; that they are broad, 
supreme, reducible to one, and that they work 
well. We have also seen that they are organic, 
structural, or constitutional in man, being en- 
graved on his original substance, as the law of 
gravitation is impressed upon matter, an inde- 
structible property of matter. Only as man 
obeys them can he be happy, or himself. 

We now observe that, though these ten laws 
are organic, and written upon man's original sub- 
stance when it was formed in the lowest parts of 
earth, nevertheless they are at first, and in in- 
fancy, dormant, latent, — an invisible writing 
upon the soul. A certain kind of ink which used 
to be called " sympathetic ink " makes no visible 



16 



THE TEN LAWS. 



mark on the paper. Words traced with it are 
not seen till the paper has been held before a 
tire, and the color of the ink drawn ont by the 
action of heat. The ten laws are written with 
invisible ink on the tables of the human heart, 
and need outward law to waken and quicken the 
inward law. 

Very young children, just emerging from baby- 
hood, do not know that it is wrong to steal or 
bear false witness. A little child takes what is 
not his own with no guilty look upon his face, 
and no guilty feeling in his heart. He does not 
yet know what is his own and what is not his 
own. There is within him only the possibility 
of knowing, the preparation for knowing, when 
the time has come, and an exciting cause begins 
to act. The law, — " Thou shalt not steal," — 
although it exists as an organic germ or possibil- 
ity in that child's heart, has not yet been devel- 
oped or brought out into consciousness by the 
action of an authority external to itself. The 
parent has to teach that child and awaken within 
it dormant moral sense, which assents to the law 
as soon as it is heard and understood, for it finds 
an echo of the law within its own breast. 

The conscience of that child answers to the 
law of honesty as face answers to face, as the air 
answers to the wing of the bird, or the water to 
the fin of the fish. " When thou saidst, Seek ye 



THE TEN LAWS. 



17 



my face, my heart said unto thee, Thy face, 
Lord, will I seek." The heart is a mirror that 
reflects God's law. It is seemingly a blank 
page, but really a page written all over with 
invisible characters. 

It may be thought an objection to this view 
that certain nations — and nations by no means 
barbarous and uncultivated — have held and 
taught, as duties, actions of a very different or 
opposite character. Thus Greek youth were 
taught that it was virtuous to steal ; and we ask 
how can it be possible that the law against steal- 
ing is organic, if a whole cultivated nation could 
hold that stealing was virtuous ? It was not, 
however, stealing that was commended, but only 
the adroitness in stealing which was able to 
avoid detection. The law was there like a dis- 
torted feature, seen in an imperfect, uneven 
mirror. 

It must never be forgotten that the moral sense 
of our race has been distorted and disturbed by 
sin. Man is often only a caricature of himself. 
He seems what he is not, and seems not what he 
is. The idea of duty is obscured and degraded. 
Actual distortion proves intended symmetry. 
He who obeys the moral law will find a transcript 
of it in his own soul. The writing may be 
blurred and blotted by sin and evil, but it can be 
restored by submitting it to the light and heat of 

2 



18 



THE TEN LAWS. 



God's perfect law. Eevelation assists man to 
recover the lost art of righteous living. It 
reveals man to himself. It restores the vanished 
ideal of moral rectitude, and finally finds the 
exact counterpart of itself in the perfected 
man. 

" What is a mere parental rule without reason 
to the child of five years must, through the 
child's obedience to it, shine in its own light, and 
carry its own authority, by the time the child is 
fifteen ; and in the same way ancient laws, which 
at first were obeyed only because it was believed 
God gave them, are at last seen to be so right and 
good that they would still be obeyed if the 
divine and supernatural sanction were obscured 
or withdrawn." 

To use one other illustration : in the same way 
that the power of speech is latent in man, and 
needs the excitement of spoken words to become 
vocal utterance, so the law within needs to be 
warmed, quickened, and made alive by the law 
without. The child hears its mother say " mam- 
ma" and begins itself to say "mamma," going 
through all the upward steps and stops to the full, 
varied speech of Milton or Shakespeare ; but the 
power of speech was there before it had been 
summoned forth into consciousness and action. 
So man hears God's law, " Thou shalt not steal, or 
kill, or commit adultery," and his soul responds, 



THE TEN LAWS. 



19 



"Thou shalt not steal, or kill, or commit adul- 
tery. " The inward law, that was dead, is made 
alive by the outward law when it is declared. 

As there is a possible chicken in the egg, so 
soon as it is laid, which must be warmed and in- 
cubated into an actual chicken, so there is a pos- 
sible perfect and upright man in every child born 
into the world, which must be warmed and incu- 
bated into an actual perfect and upright man, by 
the quickening power and process of parental, 
social, and divine influence. Man is thus a social 
product. 

All man's inward faculties are developed by 
action upon them from without. Physical facul- 
ties are developed in the gymnasium ; mental 
faculties are developed in the school; moral 
faculties are developed in the study and practice 
of moral law. 

Those who most revere human nature seek 
constantly to foster and promote the moral quali- 
ties in that nature by the exercise of discipline 
and restraint. The whole business of preachers, 
teachers, parents, and reformers is to cherish, 
brood over, and stimulate the unformed capacity 
in man to know right from wrong; to seek right 
and avoid wrong, to love right and hate' wrong. 
This is done by training. Parents tell their 
children not to steal or lie. They punish them 
for doing so. They put an accent of suffering 



20 



THE TEN LAWS. 



upon disobedience. These ten words are a first 
revelation of moral law which grows to the obe- 
dient soul clearer and clearer, till it shines with 
the authority and beauty of heaven itself. 

It is a misfortune to the times if this moral 
law in domestic training has been relaxed. If 
parents no longer claim and exercise wisely and 
seriously the natural, inalienable right to govern 
their children, it is a calamity. " There was a 
theory/' so says a most excellent preacher of our 
own times, " promulgated early in this century, 
which taught that a child's own conscience and 
reason should be regarded as a sufficient rule of 
his conduct, and that a parent of forty should 
never require a baby of four to do anything 
which the baby itself did not recognize as expe- 
dient and right. It is doubtful whether anybody 
was ever foolish enough to try how the theory 
would work, but it is certain that there is a gen- 
eral indisposition or inability to assert and main- 
tain parental authority." 

Children, so neglected and abused by those who 
should protect and cherish them, will perhaps 
never know the majesty and beauty of God's 
blessed, righteous law. They will later feel its 
pressure. They will later come under its power. 
They will later revere its supreme and august 
authority. New laws will not avail. Old laws 
amended will not help them. Nothing will help 



THE TEN LAWS. 



21 



them but a return to the eternal law, both new 
and old, of righteousness as summed up in the 
great commandment. Having obeyed these ten 
commandments, they will learn more and more 
perfectly, year by year, that righteousness is 
not righteousness merely because commanded, 
although everything God commands is right ; 
that sin is not sin because forbidden, but for- 
bidden because it is sin ; that everything God 
forbids is sinful ; and that these laws, written on 
tables of stone, were indelibly written creation 
morning, on tables of the human heart. 

The ten laws were given to be kept. This may 
seem a truism, almost a trivial truism; but no 
man can be ignorant of the fact that many reli- 
gious people nowadays say, almost as a matter of 
course, that the commandments of God were 
given to convict us of sins, to bring us to a sense 
of guilt, and to make us aware of our need of 
divine help and forgiveness. That the laws of 
God do have such an effect, and were intended to 
have such an effect, cannot be questioned, but 
neither ought it to be questioned that they were 
given in good faith, that they are wholesome sal- 
utary, necessary laws, and were given in order 
that they might be obeyed carefully and con- 
stantly. We are to walk in the way of his com- 
mandments ; to keep them and do them. 

The children of Israel were required to keep 



22 



THE TEN LAWS. 



them and do them. They were not to have false 
gods, nor to make graven images, nor to work on 
the Sabbath, nor to kill or steal or commit 
adultery. The ten laws command obedience, 
expect obedience, and will enforce obedience with 
visited penalty. Christ released no man from 
the commandments. He came himself to do 
them, and he has taught us that those who love 
him will keep his commandments and his 
Father's commandments. We are not to evade 
them nor invalidate them on some fanciful 
ground or pretext that the gospel frees us from 
the sacred obligation of law. They were given 
to be kept. 

There is an opposite error, — that they were 
given for rude, barbarous people, people low 
down in the social scale ; that they may be 
needed in the slums, and among the offscouring, 
but that they are not needed among religious and 
spiritual people. They are indeed not needed 
among these people just in so far as they have 
come to be unconsciously and invariably obeyed. 
It is not necessary to tell a man that he must do 
what he always wants to do. The law ceases to 
be law only when it has become habit, or so 
much a part of man that he obeys without know- 
ing it. In that way he is indeed freed from the 
law by coming perfectly under the law. 

We are not therefore to despise what is called 



THE TEN LAWS. 



23 



" common morality," or to suppose that the laws 
requiring this morality are only for barbarous 
and degraded people; they are for all. None 
are beneath their notice, and none are exempted 
from their power. The most spiritually minded 
man is the man who most gladly runs in the 
way of God's commandments, and takes delight 
in them as the laws of God, which are holy, just, 
and good. When they cease to be a shackle, they 
become a golden ornament. The chains that 
once dragged their heavy, weary weight on the 
limbs become wings bearing up the whole body, 
and helping the redeemed immortal to run with- 
out being weary, and to walk without fainting. 
Great reward and blessedness have those who 
keep the commandments to do them. " More to 
be desired are they than gold, yea, than much fine 
gold: sweeter also than honey and the honey- 
comb. Moreover by them is thy servant warned : 
and in keeping of them there is great reward." 

These ten laws are not easy to keep, or 
rather, perhaps I should say, one of them is 
not easy to keep. If you ask which one of them 
is not easy to keep, I shall decline to tell you 
which one of them is not easy for me to keep, 
and shall not think it necessary or proper 
to ask which one of them is not easy for you to 
keep. For every man there is one not easy to 
keep ; it troubles him more than all the rest. 



24 



THE TEN LAWS. 



One man goes through the whole list and stum- 
bles only when he comes to the last and tenth. 
It is hard for him not to envy ; it is hard for 
him not to envy that other lawyer who has 
a greater practice than his own ; or that other 
preacher who has a larger church than his own ; 
or that other shopkeeper who sells more goods 
than he does. 

Another man stumbles over the very first com- 
mandment ; he says to himself, " Thou shalt 
have no other gods before me/' and then con- 
siders how very hard it is to have no other gods ; 
other gods are so alluring, so numerous, — as 
the god of business, or pleasure, or wealth, or 
honor, or fame. He has one enthroned already, 
high in his heart, and he cannot bear to tear it 
from that throne. All the other commandments 
he could keep fairly well. He does not wish to 
steal, or kill, or commit adultery; he is willing 
to keep the Sabbath, and honor his father and 
mother ; but this one, " Thou shalt have no other 
gods," is hard. 

And, besides this, these ten laws may be kept 
in the letter but not in the spirit ; it is not easy 
to keep them in the spirit. We need not extend 
them, as some do, extravagantly, to cover every 
possible sin, but, taken only in a fair legitimate 
interpretation, they reach very far and require 
a great deal. 



THE TEN LAWS. 



25 



When once we have heard Christ read the ten 
commandments, we shall no longer think them 
easy to keep. He went up into a mountain and 
sat down : the mountain neither trembled nor 
quaked ; no dark and threatening clouds gathered 
about it ; the beautiful water of Galilee lay sleep- 
ing at his feet ; the scene was a lovely one, most 
unlike Sinai. He opened his mouth and taught 
the people, and these are some of the things he 
taught them about the ten laws : " Ye have 
heard that it was said to them of old time, Thou 
shalt not kill; and whosoever shall kill shall 
be in danger of the judgment : but I say unto 
you, that every one who is angry with his 
brother shall be in danger of the judgment. . . . 
Ye have heard that it was said, Thou shalt not 
commit adultery : but I say unto you, that every 
one that looketh on a woman to lust after her 
hath committed adultery with her already in his 
heart. ... Ye have heard that it was said, Thou 
shalt love thy neighbor, and hate thine enemy : 
but I say unto you, Love your enemies, and pray 
for them that persecute you; that ye may be 
sons of your Father which is in heaven." 

We see, then, that although these laws were 
given to be kept, and are an organic part of 
man's spiritual nature, being written upon his 
members; that although his happiness depends 
upon their being kept, — it is by no means easy 



26 



THE TEN LAWS. 



to keep them : they are like a fire burning in the 
bones ; they lay the axe at the root of the tree ; 
they build up a new man who is created in right- 
eousness and true holiness, and lead us to cry 
out in despair with St. Paul, " Who shall deliver 
me from the body of this death ? " They are 
a sharp sword, piercing to the dividing asunder 
of soul and spirit, of the joints and marrow ; 
discerning the thoughts and intents of the heart. 

Because we have discovered that these ten 
laws are hard to keep, we should be ready to 
pray : " Teach me, 0 Lord, the way of thy 
statutes ; and I shall keep it unto the end. Give 
me understanding, and I shall keep thy law ; yea, 
I shall observe it with my whole heart. Make 
me to go in the paths of thy commandments; 
for therein do I delight." 



III. 



III. 



THE FIRST LAW. 



Thou shalt have no other gods before me. — Exodus xx. 3. 
'HP V HE Apostle Paul in his letter to the Romans 



JL charges mankind with deep moral guilt, 
for being ignorant of God, for having false 
gods, and for worshipping and serving the crea- 
ture more than the Creator. He does not say 
that this guilt is confined to the Jews, because 
they had a revelation of the true God, but he 
says it was shared by the Romans and the 
Greeks and the Barbarians and all men every- 
where. He says that " the wrath of God is 
revealed from heaven against those who hold 
down the truth in unrighteousness ; because 
that which may be known of God is manifest 
in them ; for God manifested it unto them." 

" For the invisible things of him since the 
creation of the world are clearly seen, being 
perceived through the things that are made, 
even his everlasting power and divinity; that 
they may be without excuse : because that, know- 
ing God, they glorified him not as God, neither 




30 



THE TEN LAWS. 



gave thanks ; but became vain in their reason- 
ings, and their senseless heart was darkened. 
Professing themselves to be wise, they became 
fools, and changed the glory of the incorruptible 
God for the likeness of an image of corruptible 
man, and of birds, and fourfooted beasts, and 
creeping things." 

Paul in this passage makes short work of the 
notion that only those nations to whom the 
Bible or the Old Testament Scriptures were 
given can have any knowledge of the true and 
living God. He says that the Romans and the 
Grecians and the Barbarians might have known, 
that they ought to have known, that some of them 
did know, that the heavens told them plainly 
enough, that they were without excuse, that they 
did not like to have the knowledge of God; 
refused to have the knowledge of God ; that, 
therefore, God gave them up to a reprobate 
mind and to all unrighteousness. 

Every man born into the world has, by virtue 
of his birth as a man, some vague and perhaps 
fanciful idea of a being, better and stronger than 
all other beings, to be found somewhere, either 
in the heavens above, or in the earth beneath, or 
in the waters under the earth. " There ? s perfect 
goodness somewhere; so I strive." This Being 
is always saying to man's conscience, "Thou 
shalt have no other gods before me." 



THE FIRST LAW. 



31 



Every man, according to his gifts, has some 
idea of a Being who is " absolute truth " and 
righteousness. He may not know where to find 
him, or how to appear before him ; but he cannot, 
save by the most wilful and deliberate sin against 
his own soul, lose utterly the thought of such a 
supreme and holy God. We are living in a 
world where things are always beginning and 
ending; we call it a world of phenomena, of 
things that seem and are not, and we cannot help 
thinking of some Great Being who has neither 
beginning nor ending; who neither comes nor 
goes ; who is not appearance, but reality ; who 
always was, and always will be ; who is above all 
the changes and chances that beset us here in 
the flesh. This is the one True and Living God : 
" the Lord thy God who brought thee out of the 
land of Egypt, and out of the house of bondage." 
This True and Living God we cannot forget save 
by sin and debauchery of the soul. He is the 
first and the last, the best and the highest, the 
one altogether good and lovely; and he says, 
" Thou shalt have no other gods before me." 

This God is to be found everywhere by those 
who seek him with their whole heart. He is to 
be found in the world outside of ourselves. The 
heavens declare his glory, and the firmament 
showeth his handiwork. No man can go out into 
the open air at night, and look up into the wide, 



32 



THE TEN LAWS. 



silent expanse of the heavens, filled with its host 
of shining stars, without thinking, as he looks, 
steadfastly and reverently, of a Being who can 
say, "for as the heavens are higher than the 
earth, so are my ways higher than your ways, 
and my thoughts than your thoughts." 

No man can look down into the world within 
himself without finding in that world, more or 
less clearly manifest, the presence of a Being 
who speaks to the conscience, either accusing 
or else excusing. 

" It is a sad and terrible thing," says Carlyle, 
"to see a whole generation of men and women 
professing to be cultivated, looking around in a 
purblind fashion, and finding no God in this Uni- 
verse. I suppose it is a reaction from the reign 
of cant and hollow pretence, professing to believe 
what in fact they do not believe. And this is 
what we have got to, — all things from frog 
spawn ; the gospel of dirt the order of the day. 
The older I grow, — and I now stand upon the 
brink of Eternity, — the more comes back to me 
the sentence in the Catechism which I learned 
when a child, and the fuller and deeper its mean- 
ing becomes : 6 What is the chief end of man ? 
To glorify God and enjoy him forever.' Xo 
gospel of dirt, teaching that men have descended 
from frogs through monkeys, can ever set that 
aside." 



THE FIRST LAW. 



33 



" A pagan, kissing, for a step of Pan, 
The wild goat's hoof-print on the loamy down, 
Exceeds our modern thinker who turns back 
The strata, — granite, limestone, coal, and clay, — 
Concluding coldly with, 1 Here 's law ! where 's God ? ' " 

We need not ascend up into heaven nor go 
down into hell, for " the word is nigh thee, in thy 
heart and in thy mouth." They shall not teach 
every man his neighbor, saying, Know the Lord ; 
for he himself will teach every man to know 
him, and walk in his ways. He knows their 
hearts and minds, and will write his laws upon 
those hearts and minds if they are willing to 
have them written. There is no man fallen so 
low that he may not find this God, and hearken 
diligently to his word. 

It is very wonderful that God himself should 
be teaching us and taking care of us, as a mother 
takes care of her child ; that he should be watch- 
ing over our thoughts, the intents and purposes 
of our hearts and minds ; sometimes piercing 
those minds and hearts, like a sharp sword, to the 
dividing asunder of soul and spirit; that he 
should be telling us, in a still small voice, what 
we are, and what we should be doing ; that he is 
holding us back when we go astray, and urging 
us on when we linger in the way. He is giving 
us his lessons even when we do not heed them. 
He is applying the rod, checking, restraining, 

3 



34 



THE TEN LAWS. 



teaching us, and revealing himself to us as the 
greatest, highest, and best, who will put his law 
into our minds and write them in our hearts. 
He is ever saying to us, " I will be to you a God, 
and ye shall be to me a people." 

As the prophet Hosea said, "I will call that 
my people which was not my people ; and her 
beloved which was not beloved. And it shall 
come to pass that, in the place where it was said 
unto them, Ye are not my people, it shall be 
said unto them,. Ye are the sons of the living 
God." Surely no rebuke could be more severe 
and terrible to those who go among the heathen 
saying, " You are not the people of God, you have 
not the knowledge of God ; we are the people, and 
we have the knowledge ; we will tell you." 

Paul does not forget the question, " What ad- 
vantage then hath the Jew, or what is the profit 
of circumcision ? " And his answer is ready ; 
" The Gentiles have much, but you have more; 
they have the unwritten revelation of the heavens 
and earth, but you have also the written revela- 
tion of holy men moved by the Holy Ghost." 
Paul says, " What advantage ? Much every way; 
first of all, that they were intrusted with the 
oracles of God." 

Paul does not undervalue the written revelation. 
He knows how much was committed to the Jews, 
and his thoughts take fire with rapture when 



THE FIRST LAW. 



35 



speaking of these oracles of the living God : but 
neither does he forget or diminish the unwritten 
revelation made by visible things, of the power 
and divinity of God given to every man and 
leaving every man without excuse. 

It is upon this lasting and wide basis that the 
first commandment rests. It is addressed to 
every man because every man has some knowledge 
of the one true and only God. He is to have no 
other gods. 

Of this God all human knowledge is partial. 
No man hath seen God at any time. Paul's 
knowledge was partial; John's knowledge was 
partial ; so was the knowledge of Isaiah and 
Moses and Daniel, and all other holy men who 
were moved by the Holy Ghost. Such knowledge 
is high, and no man can attain unto it. The 
knowledge of God possessed by Socrates was 
partial, but it was good so far as it went. The 
difference between the knowledge of Paul, John, 
or Socrates and that of degraded image-wor- 
shippers, is less than the difference between 
all human knowledge and that of pure or perfect 
beings, for " the pure in heart shall see God." 

Although we cannot know God wholly, we can 
know him truly. As we know the heavens when 
we look up into them at night, but do not know 
all about the heavens, indeed, know them most 
truly by looking rather than by measuring and 



36 



THE TEN LAWS. 



weighing, — as a child knows them, and not as 
an astronomer knows them, — so we know God 
by obeying him, and loving him, though we do 
not know all about him. The angels do not 
know him thus ; the archangels do not know him 
thus. He is higher than the highest, and yet 
makes himself known to the little child. 

Men fall into the mistake of supposing that 
because they cannot know all about God, they 
cannot know anything about him. Indeed, to 
know God is a different thing, a much more 
blessed and delightful thing, than to know about 
him. We shall always be learning about God, 
but we shall never know him better than we do 
when looking upon the scenes of Calvary. There 
God is known, — the heart of God is known. 

A little child, the son of Charles Darwin or 
Herbert Spencer, may not know much about his 
father's philosophy; may not know much about 
evolution or ethics; but that little boy knows his 
father, and knows him much better than profound 
students of that fathers philosophy. So the 
humble and obedient man who loves God and 
prays to him knows God better than the most 
accomplished and laborious scholar who is ever 
learning, but never coming to a knowledge of the 
truth. 

We see then how this law finds a basis for it- 
self — an immovable and sufficient basis — in the 



THE FIRST LAW. 



37 



human heart. It is a law — like the others — 
organic, structural, constitutional, in man. It 
can be erased from the heart only by sin. Every 
man, every child, civilized or barbarous, thinks 
of the highest and the best, and the highest and 
best is always saying to that man or child, " Thou 
shalt have no other gods before me." To have 
any other god than the highest and best is fatal 
and false. It is treachery to one's self. 

Speaking of English infidelity, John Euskin 
says : " Over and over again it has happened that 
nations have denied their gods, but they denied 
them bravely. The Greeks in their decline 
jested at their religion, and frittered it away in 
flatteries and fine arts; the French refused theirs 
fiercely, tore down their altars, and brake their 
carven images. The question about God with 
both these nations was still, even in their decline,, 
fairly put though falsely answered. ' Either 
there is, or is not, a supreme ruler : we consider 
of it, declare there is not, and proceed accord- 
ingly.' But we English have put the matter in 
an entirely new light : ' There is a supreme 
ruler; no question of it; only he cannot rule. 
His orders won't work. He will be quite satis- 
fied with euphonious and respectful repetition of 
them. Execution would be too dangerous under 
existing circumstances, which he certainly never 
contemplated.' The entire and undisturbed im- 



38 



THE TEN LAWS. 



becility with which men declare that the laws of 
the Devil are the only practicable ones, and that 
the laws of G-od are merely a form of poetical 
language, exceeds all ever before heard or read 
of infidelity. The fool had often said in his 
heart, ' There was no God ; J but to hear him say 
distinctly with his lips, ' There is a foolish God/ 
— that is something for which the world was 
hardly prepared." 

This first of the ten great laws is spoken by 
one who says, " I am the Lord thy God, which 
brought thee out of the land of Egypt, out of the 
house of bondage." These words are a prelude to 
every one of the ten commandments. They are 
to be spoken before each one of the command- 
ments, thus: "I am the Lord thy God, which 
brought thee out of the house of bondage. Thou 
shalt have no other gods before me." " I am the 
Lord thy God, which brought thee out of the 
house of bondage ; thou shalt not make unto thee 
any graven image." 

Men have had other gods, — gods many and lords 
many, who brought them out of no house of bond- 
age; who have not delivered them from crime 
and sin and misery; who have too often plunged 
them into crime and sin and misery; gods like 
themselves, only unspeakably worse. 

There is nothing so fatal in its effect upon 
character as a false worship and a false god. It 



THE EIEST LAW. 



39 



is like a taint in the blood ; it is like a corruption 
in the fountain ; all the stream is defiled. When 
the light in men is darkness, how great is that 
darkness ; when the good is evil, how terrible is 
that evil! There is no baseness so base as reli- 
gious baseness. Superstition darkens the whole 
man, — body, soul, and spirit. " Thou shalt have 
no other gods before me." 

Men have had " other gods" who were far 
away. It has been necessary to call aloud; 
either they are talking, or pursuing, or on a jour- 
ney, or else they are asleep and must be awak- 
ened. Their worshippers have been put to great 
inconvenience and jeopardy. This sort of god 
has been described rather scornfully as " an ab- 
sentee God, sitting idle ever since the first Sab- 
bath, at the outside of his universe, seeing it go." 
Even Plato did not know how a pure celestial 
deity could come near a world so desperately 
wicked and forlornly miserable. This god has 
been very hard to put away. 

Men have had " other gods " who were indiffer- 
ent, — gods without any firm, settled moral con- 
victions ; gods who wished to take things easy, 
and avoid trouble; gods who were dainty and 
delicate, emotional, effeminate, indulgent ; who 
let sin go unpunished, because punishment is dis- 
agreeable ; gods whose ruling did not rule ; very 
gentlemanly gods, quite refined and respectable, 



40 



THE TEN LAWS. 



always doing the proper thing and patronizing 
well-ordered churches, hearing the inild, fault- 
lessly intoned adoration of fastidiously modulated 
voices. These gods also have been hard to put 
away. 

Men have had " other gods " who were cruel and 
vindictive, — gods whose thirst for blood must be 
slaked ; gods who could cause myriads of people 
to suffer forever in a place of torment which had 
been prepared for them ; who could ordain some 
to be saved and some to be lost, and then call 
upon all to be saved, well knowing that the call 
would neither be heard nor answered by a vast 
majority of the race, because they were doomed 
and foreordained to destruction. 

These are the gods of whom it is said, " Thou 
shalt not have them before me." Away with 
them ! they are abominable gods, and they make 
those who worship them and serve them abomi- 
nable also. They infect the universe. The place 
where they have been and where they have been 
worshipped needs to be fumigated. 

Men have tried to have these gods, but they 
have had no god save the One True and Only 
God who brought them out of the house of bond- 
age. He is not a God far away, but near at hand, 
close about us, always with us, knowing us, 
knowing all our ways, our thoughts, our most 
secret wishes ; knowing our paths and our lying 



THE FIRST LAW. 41 

down ; not needing to be called upon aloud ; not 
an " absentee god," gone into some distant part 
of the universe, or so busy listening to the angels 
as to miss hearing the smallest child's voice. 
Not an indifferent god, but one who is always 
bringing us into judgment for every idle word and 
secret thought ; who will by no means clear the 
guilty ; who will avenge his elect speedily ; 
who is always on the track of evil-doers, and who 
will cause them at last to call on the rocks and 
mountains to fall on them and hide them from 
the wrath of the Lamb. Not a cruel and malig- 
nant god, but one forgiving iniquity and trans- 
gression and sin, unwilling that any should per- 
ish ; " who so loved the world that he gave his 
only begotten son that whosoever believeth in 
him should not perish, but have everlasting 
life." 

The heart fails, the tongue falters and grows 
silent, when we think of this blessed, all-righteous 
and perfect One who is not ashamed to be called 
our God, and who is ever striving to make us 
more and more his people. " 0 come, let us sing 
unto the Lord; let us heartily rejoice in the 
strength of our salvation. Let us come before 
his presence with thanksgiving and show our- 
selves glad in him with psalms. For the Lord is 
a great God, and a great King above all gods. In 
his hand are all the corners of the earth, and the 



42 



THE TEN LAWS. 



strength of the hills is his also. The sea is his, 
and he made it, and his hands prepared the dry 
land. 0 come, let ns worship and fall down and 
kneel before the Lord our Maker. For he is the 
Lord our God, and we are the people of his pas- 
ture and the sheep of his hand. 0 worship the 
Lord in the beauty of holiness, let the whole 
earth stand in awe of him." "Thou shalt have 
no other gods before me." 



IV. 

€&e J>econ& Hato. 



IV. 



THE SECOND LAW. 



Thou shalt not make unto thee a graven image, nor the 
likeness of any form that is in heaven above, or that is in the 
earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth : thou 
shalt not bow down thyself unto them, nor serve them : for 
I the Lord thy God am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity 
of the fathers upon the children, upon the third and upon the 
fourth generation of them that hate me ; and showing mercy 
unto thousands of them that love me and keep my command- 
ments. — Exodus xx. 4-6. 



k HESE graven images which men are neither 



-L to make nor to worship are not spoken of 
as being gods, but as being like gods. This law 
does not imply that men would ever become so 
sottish as to mistake blocks of wood or stone 
for gods superior to themselves. As a matter 
of fact, men probably do not become so sottish, 
do not suppose that blocks of wood or stone are 
really gods, but merely that they are like gods ; 
that they stand for gods; that they suggest the 
presence of gods, or that the gods do sometimes 
reside in them. 

An educated Hindu, replying to the accusa- 
tion that his countrymen worship the idol itself, 




46 



THE TEN LAWS. 



says, "If this is what is meant by idolatry, we 
disclaim idolatry, we abhor idolatry, and we de- 
plore the ignorance or uncharitableness of those 
who charge us with this grovelling system of 
worship." 

The force of this commandment, then, is directed 
against that common and deeply rooted tendency 
in man to body forth in some visible shape his 
idea or conception of the invisible, ever-living 
and only eternal God. God is indescribable ; he 
is unrepresentable in any outward form to human 
sight. No man hath seen God or can see him. 
Any likeness of him which may be formed will 
certainly mislead. 

When the Jews stood before Horeb they heard 
the voice of words, but they saw no manner of 
similitude. It is impossible to express the infi- 
nite ; any attempt to do so will only degrade 
those who make it. When Pompey forced his 
way into the Jewish temple, surveyed every part, 
and penetrated into the holy of holies, he found 
that sacred enclosure empty. He saw there no 
statue, or image, or visible form of any divine 
being to whom the place was consecrated. " God 
is a spirit : and they that worship him must 
worship him in spirit and truth." 

Man is a being of such dignity and worth 
that it is a shame and dishonor for him to bow 
himself down before gods of silver and gold, 



THE SECOND LAW. 



47 



the work of his own hands. Even the sun, moon, 
and stars, and all the host of heaven, though they 
seem to lift man above himself, and fill his 
heart with a solemn sense of greatness, infini- 
tude, and glory, are not to be made objects of 
adoration. Thou shalt worship the Lord thy 
God, and him only shalt thou serve. Only God 
is a being great enough, glorious enough, and 
good enough, to be worshipped by man. 

It matters little whether the graven image is 
carved out of gold, silver, ivory, wood, clay, 
stone, or out of that more subtile substance 
which men deal with in their thoughts. There 
are images visible to the bodily eye, and other 
images visible to the mental eye. When the 
German professor said to his class, " Gentlemen, 
we will construct God to-morrow,"* he was as 
certainly planning to fashion an image of God 
as when the maker of graven images begins to 
work with his tools upon gold or silver. Idols, 
images, and mental conceptions of God, moulded 
and shaped, not in the physical, but in the meta- 
physical world, not with tools of iron and brass, 
but with cunning powers of logic, reason, imagi- 
nation, and fancy, set up not in the dim religious 
light of sacred temples, but within the domain 
of creeds, platforms, theologies, and statements 
of doctrine, are the work, not indeed of our hands, 
but of our brains, and are not worthy objects of 



48 



THE TEN LAWS. 



adoration and praise. We are not to put any- 
thing, and certainly not our conceptions of God, 
in the place of God himself, nor between God 
and ourselves. 

Idolatry is to be found not alone in India and 
China and Africa, — not alone among the heathen ; 
but it also exists in German universities, Ameri- 
can theological schools and missionary boards ; 
and sometimes the idols found in these places 
are as hideous as Moloch and Thor, Siva and 
Vishnu, or any of the atrocious monsters wor- 
shipped in pagan temples. Thou shalt not make 
unto thee any graven image. 

Graven images, intended to be in the likeness 
or similitude of God, cannot fail to give in the 
end false notions and ideas of the divine 
character and being. If God is unspeakable, 
unrepresentable, and indescribable, then any 
effort to describe or represent can only misrep- 
resent and caricature. Idols are caricatures of 
God. John Fiske says : " I remember distinctly 
the conception which I had formed" of God 
" when five years of age. I imagined a narrow 
office just over the zenith, with a tall standing 
desk running lengthwise, upon which lay several 
open ledgers bound in coarse leather. There 
was no roof over this office, and the walls rose 
scarcely five feet from the floor, so that a person 
standing at the desk could look out upon the 



THE SECOND LAW. 



49 



whole world. There were two persons at the 
desk, and one of them — a tall slender man, of 
aquiline features, wearing spectacles, with a pen 
in his hand and another behind his ear — was 
God. The other, whose appearance I do not 
distinctly recall, was an attendant angel. To 
my infant mind, this picture was not grotesque, 
but ineffably solemn, and the fact that all my 
words and acts were thus written down to con- 
front me at the Day of Judgment seemed a 
matter of grave concern." This conception of 
God in the form of a man, at an office desk, cer- 
tainly as harmless as any that could be framed, 
as congruous as any, and innocent in the mind 
of a child, serves specially well to show how 
inadequate and false all such definite and limited 
images of God must always be. 

We begin with thinking that the images are 
like the gods, and end with thinking that the gods 
are like the images. We cannot expand the finite 
to meet the infinite, and so we contract the infinite 
to meet the finite. The ancient Hindus, for in- 
stance, conceived of God as calm, immense, irre- 
sistible, physical power, and so they worshipped 
gigantic emblems, vast ponderous masses, huge 
buildings, enshrining hundred-handed deities of co- 
lossal proportions. Egyptians thought life sacred. 
All that had life, that produced life, or sustained 
life was divine, and so they bowed down to four- 

4 



50 



THE TEN LAWS. 



footed creatures, the sacred ibis, the crocodile, 
the bull, the snake. The Greek conceived of 
God in a much more noble way as power, but 
human power; as gracefulness and beauty, but 
human gracefulness and beauty ; as life, abounding 
vigorous, productive life, but as human life ; and 
so the Greek temples were filled with idealized 
and beautiful forms of men and women as gods 
and goddesses. In each case the attempt to con- 
ceive the inconceivable reacted, and ended not in 
lifting man up to God, but in bringing God down 
to men, and making him as one of themselves. 

Men who make and worship graven images 
cannot fail to corrupt and degrade themselves. 
These images are not anything; they are not 
real. They have eyes and see not, ears and hear 
not, feet and walk not ; they are a lie. There is 
no reality or truth about them. Those who make 
them become like unto them. The worshippers 
of fictitious unrealities become themselves ficti- 
tious unrealities. They cease to be anything. 
The Eoman augurs laughed in each other's faces. 
They no longer believed themselves, and so were 
willing to make dupes and victims of others. 

It is a law of human nature that contact of the 
soul with unreality breeds unreality in the soul. 
Men who worship false gods become false men. 
When the light has become darkness, how great is 
that darkness ! When the truth has become false- 



THE SECOND LAW. 



51 



hood, how great is that falsehood ! When religion 
has become unrighteousness, how great is that 
unrighteousness ! Insincerity in worship is the 
blackest insincerity and the blackest immorality, 
for it is the beginning of all other forms of 
immorality. It is the negation of any possible 
morality whatsoever. It is the paralysis of 
moral powers, for it is that strong delusion to 
which men are given over when they believe a 
lie. Each man becomes a lie, " a living, breath- 
ing, walking, talking lie." 

The one great source of Mahomet's power in 
the world was his deathless hatred of idolatry. 
Among the multitude of errors which he held, 
this one truth existed, flamed forth, and made his 
arm irresistible. The one thing in idolatry which 
is hateful to all true prophets, and which pro- 
vokes them to indignation and horror, is not that 
ignorant creatures worship helpless, senseless, 
wooden symbols; not that they bow down to 
some black stone or carved image, but that they 
do so, knowing that the black stone or carved 
image is not anything at all. Their merit is 
demerit. Their goodness is evil ; it is hypocrisy. 
When the living soul worships the fetich, know- 
ing that it is a fetich, then the last and foulest 
dishonor is done to that soul. 

Carlyle says : " I find Luther to have been a 
breaker of idols, no less than any other prophet. 



52 



THE TEN LAWS. 



The wooden gods of the Koreish, made of timber 
and beeswax, were not more hateful to Mahomet 
than Tetzel's pardons of sins, made of sheepskin 
and ink, were to Luther." Every prophet and 
true man must stand upon things, and not on the 
shows of things. Unreality is the fatal sin. He 
who loves and reveres eternal realities, verities, 
will turn away from the hollow shows of things, 
however decorous and accredited as intolerable 
and detestable. 

This second law, therefore, like every other one 
of the ten laws, is organic, structural, or constitu- 
tional in man. It is written legibly upon the 
soul itself, " Thou shalt not make unto thee any 
graven images." 

God has himself made an image of himself. 
He said, " Let us make man in our image, after 
our likeness." Truth, righteousness, love, tender- 
ness, in man are reflections, nay, they are refrac- 
tions of truth, righteousness, love, and tenderness 
in God. Man is partaker of the divine nature. 
He is in kinship with God. The divine in God 
is one with the divine in man. He who would see 
God must see him in himself. 

But because man is imperfect through sin, God 
has come in Christ, — the brightness of the 
Father's glory and the express image of his per- 
son, — that we might behold in him the glory that 
was with the Father before the world was. 



I w 

I V' 

THE SECOND LAW. 53 

The universe is an image of God. It reflects 
dimly and yet surpassingly the power and god- 
head. The firmament showeth his handiwork. 
If you feel the need of help and inspiration, go 
out in the night and stand beneath the solemn 
vault of heaven, look up into the mighty dome 
studded with glittering stars, and say if you do 
not feel an overpowering sense of his immensity 
and eternity ; or look out over the wide expanse 
of the sea, both when its waves are rolling, and 
when they are still and the calm surface only 
rises and falls in its endless breathing, and say if 
you are not aware that God is there. 
" A sense sublime " 

of something far more deeply interfused, 

" Whose dwelling is the light of setting suns, 
And the round ocean, and the living air, 
And the blue sky, and in the mind of man ; 
A motion and a spirit, that impels 
All thinking things, all objects of all thought, 
And rolls through all things." 

It has been pertinently said that " the world is 
a glass through which we see the Maker. But 
what men do is this : they put the dull quick- 
silver of their own selfishness behind the glass, 
and so it becomes not the transparent medium 
through which God shines, but the dead opaque 
which reflects back themselves." This is the 
penalty of making graven images. 



54 



THE TEN LAWS. 



"For I the Lord thy God am a jealous God." 
Surely the Lord our God is a jealous God, and 
surely we may rejoice that he is a jealous God. 
I am filled with wonder when men treat the say- 
ing as though it were hard. How could God be 
otherwise than jealous ? Have we not seen in 
the first great law that he is not a God afar off ? 
— not an " absentee God/' not an indifferent God ; 
that he would have man worship only the Highest 
and the best ; and now shall we be surprised to 
learn that he is a jealous God ? 

Shall not God be jealous for his creatures ? Is 
not a poet jealous for his poem ? the painter for 
his picture ? Does not the painter want his pic- 
ture hung in the best light, studied from the right 
distance and direction by those who know the 
quality and fineness of pictures ? Is not the bird 
jealous for its nest, and furious when evil happens 
to that nest or its occupants ? Is not the lioness 
jealous for her cubs, and willing to lose her life 
in defending and providing for them ? Is not a 
father jealous for his son, asking and seeking the 
best for that son, and resenting with a holy re- 
sentment any detraction or diminution of the 
truth and worth of that son? 

And shall not God be jealous for his sons ? If 
earthly parents are willing to give good gifts to 
their children, shall not the Eternal Father be 
more willing to give all good gifts, and es- 



THE SECOND LAW. 



55 



pecially his Holy Spirit, to them that ask him. 
Is he not watching over them continually ? 

The passage is sometimes read as though God 
were jealous lest he should not get worship 
enough, or as though he had not told us that he 
seeks mercy rather than sacrifice; that the sac- 
rifice of God is a broken and a contrite heart, 
which he will not despise. God is jealous, not for 
himself, but for man, with a holy, loving jealousy ; 
he is jealous lest man should fail or come short 
of that glory, honor, and immortality with which 
he has crowned him as head over all things. 

He is jealous for goodness and truth; for 
holiness and happiness ; for the world and its 
inhabitants; for man and bird and beast. He 
loves them all, and helps them all to fulfil their 
destiny. He will take vengeance upon all 
workers of iniquity. Only these strong, bold 
words, that belong to life, the life of the shop and 
the street and the home, — "jealousy, hatred, 
love," — only these words, which throb with life 
and breathe with human passion, can speak to us 
truly of God. They are the only words with 
which we can speak to God. The pale, weak 
polysyllables of philosophers, metaphysicians, 
and theologians may serve when God is afar off ; 
but when he is nigh at hand, then we want words 
which come from the heart. We shall then be 
glad that God is a jealous God. 



56 



THE TEN LAWS. 



" Visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the 
children, upon the third and upon the fourth gen- 
eration of them that hate me \ and showing mercy 
unto thousands of them that love me and keep 
my commandments. " 

Certainly it needs no second thought to know 
that this law, even if it were not the law of God, 
is beyond all question the law of man. It is 
writ large on the human soul. The early 
Greek notion of an inherited curse was that the 
children of evil and wicked men would find it 
easy to go on in evil and wicked ways ; the 
grooves of sin would already be worn deep in 
their nature, and they would walk in the ways 
of their fathers. 

If any man does not like this law, he does not 
like the world in which he lives. If he finds 
fault with this law, he finds fault with the world 
in which he lives. Such a man is bound to show 
how it could be made a better world. Here is a 
law of compensation, so quick and absolute in its 
working, so perfect in its checks and balances, 
that while it follows iniquity only to the fourth 
generation, and then runs it down and stamps it 
out so that the evil perishes, it sustains goodness 
and mercy, love and obedience, to a thousand 
generations, causes them to grow stronger and 
stronger, to be more and more triumphant, es« 
tablishing them at last forever on the earth. 



THE SECOND LAW. 



57 



This law certainly is constitutional, organic, 
structural, in man ; it is part of man. We find 
it everywhere. There is no escaping penalty. 
Insurance companies base their calculations upon 
it, and wish to know the ages of parents and 
grandparents at death. The law works both 
ways, sends down blessing and cursing. It is 
not certain that we come into the world bringing 
nothing with us. We bring the blood of our an- 
cestors ; we bring the germs of life ; we stand at 
the end of past lines and at the beginning of 
future lines. When a man goes wrong, he strikes 
down first himself, then his sons and daughters ; 
then, through them, their sons and daughters ; 
and so on, but only to the third and fourth gen- 
eration. It may be harder for you to live a 
righteous life because some ancestor of yours in 
the time of George Washington was an unright- 
eous man. 

But the law which carries evil down through 
four generations, carries goodness and virtue 
down through a thousand generations. The ratio 
is a thousand to four in favor of righteousness. 
Could there be a better law ? It is bright with 
promise. The evil runs out sooner than the 
good. Good is stronger and more enduring than 
evil. Sin perishes in four generations ; holiness 
waxes stronger and stronger to a thousand gen- 
erations. A vicious family sinks lower and lower, 



58 



THE TEN LAWS. 



grows viler and viler, weaker and weaker, till it 
disappears. The memory of the wicked shall 
rot. A virtuous family rises higher and higher, 
becomes clearer and clearer, till it puts on im- 
mortality. 66 The righteous endureth forever." 

" Shall the trick of nostril and of lips 
Descend through generations, and the soul 
That moves within our frame, like God in worlds, — 
Convulsing, urging, melting, withering, — 
Imprint no record, leave no documents 
Of her great history ? Shall men bequeath 
The fancies of their palates to their sons, 
And shall the shudder of restraining awe, 
The slow- wept tears of contrite memory, 
Faith's prayerful labor, and the food divine 
Of fasts ecstatic, — shall these pass away, 
Like wind upon the waters, tracklessly ? 
Shall the mere curl of eyelashes remain, 
And God-enshrining symbols leave no trace 
Of tremors reverent 1 " 

It is because the highest and divinest in man 
is most enduring, most certain to impress itself 
on later generations, and repeat itself in those 
generations, that man is a being of such dignity 
and worth that he cannot bow himself down 
to images of silver and gold, or prostrate him- 
self in worship before the likeness of any form 
in heaven or on earth, or bend in adoration 
of sun, moon, and stars. Being a spirit, he must 
worship God, who is a spirit, in spirit and in 
truth 3 for God seeketh such to worship him. 



V. 



THE THIRD LAW. 



Thou shalt not take the name of the Lord thy God in 
vain ; for the Lord will not hold him guiltless that taketh 
his name in vain. — Exodus xx. 7. 



HEN we look round about on the men and 



V V women in the world, we find them 
living, not alone and apart from one another, 
but in companies, colonies, and communities ; 
in towns, villages, cities, states, and countries. 
Society is inevitable and organic. There are 
communities within communities ; the tribe and 
the clan and the family within the nation. 

The thought at once comes into all reflecting 
minds that these communities must rest upon 
some real foundation, and that without such a 
foundation society could not continue to exist. 
So sagacious and sincere a man as John Locke 
laid it down in his essay on government that there 
must have been, at some time and somewhere, 
a compact between the rulers and the ruled, 
which determined upon what conditions the 
rulers should rule, and the people submit to 




62 



THE TEN LAWS. 



be ruled. Traces of such a compact have been 
sought for without success. Charters of great 
age and sanctity have been discovered, defining 
more or less clearly the duties of those who 
govern and those who are governed, and declaring 
certain acts to be lawful and others unlawful ; 
but these charters came into existence after so- 
ciety was already formed. 

These charters did not create society, but 
society created the charters. They presume 
communities as already existing. Where, then, 
are we to find that earlier primitive compact 
which gave birth to society itself, and brought 
men together in tribes and families ? 

Such a compact includes not only the rulers 
and the ruled, but extends to all classes of 
people. One writer believes it is to be found in 
language ; that spoken language is the tie or 
covenant binding men and women together in 
organic existence. Words are indeed living 
things, and- have a high sanctity, but they also 
are the expression of a deeper and earlier unity. 

Speech itself rests upon that deeper and earlier 
unity, and that unity is God. God is under all 
things and in all things ; families rest in God ; 
tribes and clans rest in God. He hath made of 
one blood all nations, and determined beforehand 
their appointed times and the bounds of their habi- 
tation. The marriage compact is a compact in 



THE THIRD LAW. 



63 



God. The man and the woman are united in God 
even before they are pronounced husband and 
wife. When the little company of pilgrims in 
the " Mayflower " had crossed the Atlantic and 
arrived on these shores, they gathered themselves 
together in the cabin before landing, and drew 
up a solemn covenant and compact, beginning 
with the words, "In the name of God, Amen." 
Witnesses in court, when called to give testimony, 
are required to hold up their hands in assent, 
while the clerk says to them, " You do solemnly 
swear, in the case now on trial, to tell the truth, 
the whole truth, and nothing but the truth; 
so help you God ! " 

Society therefore rests upon God, who is the 
substance and reality underneath and behind all 
things ; and it is because society rests upon God as 
the substance beneath all things that this third 
law says to us: "Thou shalt not take the name of 
the Lord thy God in vain ; for the Lord will not 
hold him guiltless who taketh his name in vain." 
To take the name of God in vain is to aim a blow 
at the foundation of social and domestic order. 
It is a blow at the state and at the family. It is 
a blow at justice and law and righteousness. It 
is a movement toward anarchy. That man who 
secretly and feloniously removes landmarks and 
changes boundaries is held guilty of a high and 
serious crime. He is held guilty, because he is 



64 



THE TEN LAWS. 



guilty. That man who trifles with the name of 
God commits a more serious crime. He seeks to 
remove not the landmarks and boundaries of 
property, but the more sacred landmarks and 
boundaries of moral existence ; he seeks to dis- 
place the very corner-stone of human welfare 
and stability. 

The name of God stands for all that is highest 
and holiest and best. It stands for social order, — 
for the state, the tribe, the family, the nation, the 
race ; and he who takes this name in vain arrays 
himself against the strength, peace, and security of 
the family, the tribe, and the brotherhood of man. 

When we look out into the natural world, see 
its beauty and fruitfulness, we cannot help asking 
whence come this beauty and fruitfulness ? 
Who is it that sends down upon us the rain that 
waters the earth, and the snow that returns not 
till it has accomplished its purpose ? Who 
causes the sun to shine upon us in its strength, 
and gives to us the ripened harvests and the 
fruitful seasons ? Why is the earth so bountiful, 
the air so pleasant and refreshing, the skies over 
our heads so bright with the light of the sun by 
day and the shining of the stars by night ? 

There can be but one answer to these questions. 
God, who is the substance of all things, who is 
the reality behind shadows, the eternal which 
upholds and sustains the temporal, he it is who 



THE THIRD LAW. 



65 



gives to the earth its beauty and fruitfulness. 
He sends his rain upon the just and the unjust, 
and causes his sun to shine on the evil and the 
good. It is his hand which has arrayed the lilies 
of the field with a glory greater than Solomon's. 
It is because God is the source of all natural 
beauty, strength, and fruitfulness, filling the earth 
with gladness and bounty, that this third law 
says, " Thou shalt not take the name of the Lord 
thy God in vain." To take his name in vain is to 
aim a blow at the sweet ordinances of nature. 
It is to speak unkindly of the stars which beam 
down upon us out of God's silent heaven. 

When we look backward into the past we find 
that humanity has been slowly but steadily 
working forward and upward into a higher, 
better, and nobler condition. God is in human- 
ity, and therefore it is steadily working forward 
and upward into a higher and nobler condition. 
There is a mighty, blessed, and irresistible will, 
working at the very heart of things and in the 
very heart of things, and this will is yet to be 
done on earth as it is in heaven. It has been 
done, it is being done, and it shall be done, more 
and more perfectly, forever and forever. 

History tends upward because God is in his- 
tory. As society in its present form rests upon 
God for a solid foundation, so society in all its 
past forms and changes has rested upon God. 

5 



66 



THE TEN LAWS. 



Through God the race has conie to be what it is. 
Every victory for the right and the true is a 
divine victory. Every deliverance from bondage 
and slavery is a divine deliverance. It is the 
Lord thy God who hath brought thee out of the 
house of bondage ; and because it is the Lord thy 
God that hath brought thee out of the house of 
bondage, thou shalt not take the name of the 
Lord thy God in vain. All the achievements 
of human history, all inheritances which have 
come to us from the past, every discovery and 
invention, every vindication of virtue, innocence, 
and righteousness, all codes of wise and whole- 
some laws, all good governments and established 
social orders, all domestic peace and tranquillity, 
— all these things, with treasures of learning and 
knowledge, have come to us through an invisible, 
divine, helping presence, and they all unite in 
one solemn and impressive protest against taking 
his name in vain. 

All that man has done, and the best that man 
has done, has been done " in his name," for even 
those who knew not his name, and yet did some 
good and kind deed, did it unwittingly in his 
name. Every good, true, and brave word that 
has been spoken, has been spoken in his name. 
Every cup of cold water that has been given to a 
disciple in the name of a disciple has been given 
in his name. Every temptation that has been 



THE THIRD LAW. 



67 



overcome, has been overcome in his name. Every 
prophet and righteous man that has been re- 
ceived in the name of prophet or righteous man 
has been received in his name. It is the name 
above every name. It is the summary of all pro- 
gress in history. It is a tower and a defence. It 
is the watchword of liberty and truth. It is the 
charter of human rights. To take this name in 
vain is to take in vain every true and noble 
thing done by man through inspiration of God, 
under the sun since the beginning of time. A 
profane use of the hallowed name is treachery 
to the past, and the deeds of the past, and the 
heroes of the past. It is dishonor done our 
fathers through the God of our fathers. 

When we look forward into the future, it 
grows bright with glorious hope and promise. 
The light of early morning, coloring the clouds, 
and filling the sky and shining through the whole 
earth, is not more closely connected with the sun 
than our hopes in the Gospel of a blessed im- 
mortality are connected with God. It is God 
only who hath immortality. As God is in the 
present holding it together, keeping it up, and giv- 
ing it life ; as he was in the past ordering events 
and causing them to work out his bright designs, 
— so also he will be in the future, making the 
future a far more exceeding and eternal weight 
of glory. 



68 



THE TEN LAWS. 



" He that overcometh," — saith one that is holy 
and one that is true, — "I will make him a pillar in 
the temple of my God, and he shall go out thence 
no more ; and I will write upon him the name 
of my God, and the name of the city of ray God, 
. . . and mine own new name." Whatever place 
man is to have in the future is a place in God. 
All hopes for the future rest on that name which 
the third law says, "Thou shalt not take in 
vain." He who takes this sacred name in vain 
does what he can to rob humanity of its birth- 
right, to darken the gates of death, to take away 
the hope of immortality, and to blot out in utter 
blackness that bright and beautiful vision which 
John saw r , of the temple of God, and the city of 
God, and the holy name of God. 

Once more, when we look down into the human 
heart we see that God is there the secret of its 
best life. God is its best life. The loveliest 
instincts of humanity are born in the soul through 
the presence of God's Holy Spirit. The mother 
watching through all the livelong night ; the 
father toiling day after day, that his children may 
be clothed and fed ; the husband devoted to his 
wife, and the wife devoted to her husband; sisterly 
and brotherly affection; the soldier dying on the 
field, and giving his last drop of water to a 
companion; the engineer, with his hand on the 
throttle facing death, — all these are expressing 



THE THIRD LAW. 



69 



the divine that is in them. It is God, watching, 
toiling, loving, giving, and dying. 

Because God is in humanity, breathing his own 
life into the souls of men, and making these 
souls shine in the supreme moral beauty of self- 
sacrifice and devotion to duty, therefore he who 
takes the name of God in vain is defiling himself 
and his fellow-men. He is defiling that holy 
temple in which the divine Spirit dwells. We 
may well pause and hear his words, who said: 
" But I say unto you, Swear not at all; neither by 
the heaven, for it is the throne of God ; nor by 
the earth, for it is the footstool of his feet ; nor 
by Jerusalem, for it is the city of the great King." 
God's life is blended with all that is holy, lovely, 
and true, in the present and in the past, and in 
the future ; with all in heaven and on earth ; 
therefore, swear not at all. 

This law, therefore, like all the ten laws, is 
organic, structural, or constitutional in man. It 
is written more or less legibly upon his heart. 
It is a law to be forever obeyed, not because we 
find it written in the twentieth chapter of Exodus, 
but it is written in the twentieth chapter of 
Exodus because it is a law. It was a law from 
the beginning ; it will be to the end. It was 
made with man and in man ; it can cease to be 
a law only when man ceases to be man. 

If it should finally appear, as some claim it 



70 THE TEN LAWS. 

will, that Moses did not write the Pentateuch, or 
thafc he did not write all of it, would it follow 
that therefore this law is no more law ; that man 
may worship idols, and take the name of God 
in vain, and that children need no longer honor 
their parents ? Does a law begin to be when we 
learn it, and cease to be when we forget it ? 
How is it with laws of the body ? Did the 
blood not circulate before its circulation was dis- 
covered by Harvey? Would it cease to cir- 
culate if that discovery were lost ? 

There are laws of a kind that begin to be laws 
only when enacted, but they are very poor, cheap 
laws. If a law should be passed by government 
that all lamps must be put out at nine o'clock, 
that would be a law not in reality, but in fiction. 
Real laws are not made, they are found ; they 
belong to the nature of things. These ten laws 
belong to the nature of things ; they can neither 
change nor pass away. Heaven and earth may 
pass away, but no jot or tittle of these laws can 
fail. Had no voice spoken them from Sinai, 
they would still be true. On the soul itself 
there is a writing which forbids man to take 
the name of God in vain. 

The effect of taking God's name in vain is not 
to hurt God, but to hurt man. It strikes back- 
ward. We have seen that God is a jealous God; 
but he is jealous for his creature, and not for 



THE THIRD LAW. 



71 



himself. ISTo man can take fire in his bosom and 
not be burned ; no man can take God's name in 
vain, and not suffer loss of moral manhood. 
Common swearing is vulgar; it is the language 
of the slums. Except among the lower orders 
the habit is confined to callow braggarts, who 
have lost their manners of decent reverence for 
sacred things. u Those that wish to be clean, 
clean will they be, and those that wish to be 
foul, foul will they be." Foul language makes a 
foul spirit. Those things which proceed out of 
the mouth defile the man. By a sort of reflex 
action, the outward habit becomes the inward 
settled nature. The poison sinks in^o the soul 
and corrupts the whole life. It is a cheering sign 
of social progress that common profanity, which 
was once regarded almost as the mark of a fine 
gentleman, is now considered proof of being ill- 
bred. Only the vilest human creatures are 
habitually profane. 

You will find hardly a man sunken so low as 
not to resent an insulting use of his mother's 
name. He may be cruel and brutal; he may 
have broken her heart and burdened her life ; he 
may be a wretch unspeakable; but he will not 
suffer his mother's name to be reviled. It would 
seem self-evident that the children of a heavenly 
Father should be no less jealous of the honor and 
sacredness of his name. It is a dear and vener- 
able word. 



72 



THE TEN LAWS. 



In many cases, perhaps in most cases, the habit 
is formed early, and without much thought of its 
meanness. It is enough to make one's heart ache 
to learn how early some begin to take God's name 
in vain. The children of outcasts do it ignorantly 
and innocently ; but children trained in virtuous 
and reputable homes, not to say Christian homes, 
cannot utter an oath for the first time without 
being startled and ashamed. That shame is soon 
lost. They get used to it. The fine edge of 
moral nature is dulled. The habit grows and 
strengthens. The character is made worse, and 
that guilt comes upon them which belongs to 
those who take God's name in vain. 

It is not enough to avoid taking God's name 
in vain. These laws are negative only in form. 
There is a positive side. Ceasing to take the 
name of God in vain is beginning to take it in 
sincerity and truth ; with reverence and love. It 
is music to many ears. 

It is a tower of safety. It is the watchword of 
liberty. It is the exulting cry of heavenly hosts. 
It is an inspiration and a defence. It is the safe- 
guard of justice. It is the instinct of worship. 
It is the basis of human society. It is the glory 
and beauty of nature. It is the secret of the past 
and the promise of the future. It is the hope of 
weary nations. 

In saying our benedictions and singing our 



THE THIRD LAW. 



73 



doxologies, we know the blessedness and peace 
of taking God's name truly and reverently. They 
are like solemn and majestic music. Lifting up 
our voices in the sublime strains of the " Gloria," 
we join with angels as they sing, " Holy ! Holy ! 
Holy ! Lord God Almighty ! " The Bible is full 
of doxologies. Paul is constantly saying them : 
"Blessed be the God and father of our Lord 
Jesus Christ ; " " Now unto the King eternal, 
immortal, invisible, the only wise God, be glory 
and honor forever and ever." 

In the revelations of St. John the Divine, 
angels and archangels vie with one another in 
giving honor, glory, and power unto him that 
sitteth upon the throne, and unto the Lamb forever 
and ever. The name of God sounds sweetly in 
Christian salutations. "Good-bye" is "God be 
with you." The old Hebrew salutation is " The 
Lord bless thee and keep thee; the Lord make 
his face to shine upon thee and be gracious unto 
thee ; the Lord lift up his countenance upon thee 
and give thee peace." 

There are nineteen forms of benediction in the 
New Testament. The last sentence in the Bible 
is a benediction : " The grace of our Lord Jesus 
Christ be with you all." 

On two occasions the name of God is used in 
every Christian household. When your children 
are baptized, they are baptized into the name of 



74 



THE TEN LAWS. 



the Father and the Son and the Holy Ghost ; and 
when the man and the woman are joined together 
in matrimony, the minister says, " I pronounce 
you husband and wife, in the name of the Father 
and the Son and the Holy Ghost." If any name 
can be sanctified, this name is sanctified, — set 
apart from common and vulgar use. It is associ- 
ated with what is most sacred in life. It is to be 
spoken over our children in their cradles ; over 
our young people standing at the altar ; over our 
friends lying in their coffins. How dare we take 
it in vain ? God will not hold him guiltless who 
taketh his name in vain. 

This name becomes ours by adoption into the 
family of God. We are called after his name. 
Christ has taught us to pray, " Hallowed be thy 
name." That prayer will be answered in your 
homes and hearts when we have all learned to be 
so true, so kind, so pure, so just, so like the noble 
and good in all ages, so reverent to God and lov- 
ing to man that men will say of us, " They have 
named the name." 

" Holy and reverend is the name 
Of our eternal King, 
Thrice holy Lord ! the angels cry ; 
Thrice holy ! let us sing. 

" The deepest reverence of the mind 
Pay, O my soul, to God ; 
Lift with thy hands a holy heart 
To his sublime abode. 



THE THIRD LAW. 



" With sacred awe pronounce his name, 
Whom words nor thoughts can reach ; 
A broken heart shall please him more 
Than the best forms of speech. 

" Thou holy God ! preserve our souls 
From all pollution free ; 
The pure in heart are thy delight, 
And they thy face shall see." 



VI. 

€f>e f out**) Hato. 



VI. 



THE FOURTH LAW. 

Remember the sabbath day, to keep it holy. Six days 
shalt thou labor, and do all thy work ; but the seventh day is a 
sabbath unto the Lord thy God : in it thou shalt not do any 
work ; thou, nor thy son, nor thy daughter, thy manservant, 
nor thy maidservant, nor thy cattle, nor thy stranger that is 
within thy gates : for in six days the Lord made heaven and 
earth, the sea and all that in them is, and rested the seventh 
day ; wherefore the Lord blessed the sabbath day, and hal- 
lowed it. — Exodus xx. 8-11. 

THEEE is hardly anything more certain among 
the facts known about human life than that 
men and women need rest. They need it regu- 
larly ; they need it frequently. Most people are 
busy from morning till night, week in and week 
out, here and there, about many tasks and toils, 
and from these tasks and toils they need re- 
lease and rest. There is so much that must be 
done, and so much that must be done often, over 
and over again, like sweeping, dusting, getting 
three meals a day, opening the store in the 
morning and closing it at night, that nature 
demands rest. 



80 



THE TEN LAWS. 



Look into the faces of working men and 
women coming out of shops, stores, factories, 
and mills at six o'clock, after they have been 
busy all day long, and you will see in their faces 
the need of rest. The night's rest is not 
enough. Days pile up on one another, so that 
by and by there is a jam of days, like the block 
of vehicles in a narrow street, and something has 
to be done. The burden of weariness gets car- 
ried over from day to day, growing heavier all 
the time, till at last a free spare day is needed 
to clear up accounts, settle things, and start 
afresh. 

It is because man needs rest that the fourth 
law says, " Six days shalt thou labor, and do all 
thy work ; but the seventh day is a sabbath unto 
the Lord thy God; in it thou shalt not do any 
work; thou, nor thy son, nor thy daughter, thy 
manservant, nor thy maidservant, nor thy cat- 
tle, nor thy stranger that is within thy gates." 
" This day shall be a clear, free day for you." It 
is as though God said to every member of the 
human race, to all the men and women toiling 
and striving in the heat and burden of the day : 
"You are now my guests ; during this Sab- 
bath of the Lord thy God you are in my house, 
with my blue skies over your heads, and my 
solid earth underneath your feet, receiving my 
rain or snow which comet h down from above and 



THE FOURTH LAW. 



81 



returneth not thither till it has accomplished the 
purpose whereunto it was sent ; and so long as 
you are my guests in my house, living on my 
loving hospitality, it is not my will that you shall 
do any manner of work. You shall be free from 
all work, and your children shall be free, and 
your servants shall be free, and your cattle shall 
be free, and the strangers with you shall be free." 

Once in every seven days the strain becomes 
too great and is taken off. Every wheel is to 
stop. Every hoof is to stand still. Men hurt 
themselves, overwork themselves, live under too 
high a pressure, and it is to meet this need of 
rest, to lower the high pressure, and take off the 
intensity of life, that the fourth law requires 
every man to cease from all manner of work. 

Of course, understood literally, it is impossible 

that every kind of work should stop on the 

seventh day. The dusting and sweeping may 

indeed go undone, but the three meals must be 

got ready. Farmers must feed their stock, ships 

in mid-ocean must steam on, food for the city 

must be prepared, the sick must be visited and 

nursed, all necessary works, and works of mercy 

must go on, but everything that can stop, must 
stop. 

He who fails to keep the fourth law hurts 
himself and his fellow-men. An assault on the 
Sabbath day is a blow at humanity. Jeremiah 

6 



82 THE TEN LAWS. 

told the people that no burdens were to be 
brought through the gates of the city on the 
Sabbath day. When rich men, will have their 
burdens carried through the gates of the city on 
the Sabbath day, they are robbing the poor man 
of his right to that rest which God claims for 
him, and which nature demands. They are un- 
just to the poor, and show want of brotherly 
kindness. Such want of sympathy will react 
upon the land. 

The Sabbath is God's token to the poor man. 
It is a pledge from God that he cares for the 
poor and will not see them oppressed or held in 
bondage. It is the laborer's Magna Charta. It 
is the palladium of their rights and liberties. It 
is an earnest of the heavenly rest which re- 
maineth for the people of God. It is the pillar 
of cloud by day, and of fire by night, going before 
the people and guiding them out of the land of 
bondage. It is God's deliverance from ceaseless, 
grinding, hopeless drudgery. It is the crown of 
labor and the birthright of man. It is not im- 
posed as a burden, but granted as a heritage. 

Laboring people begin to understand what the 
Sabbath is to them. Socialists have put forth as 
one of their first demands that the state shall 
forever prohibit all kinds of Sunday labor. Ap- 
parently Moses made no mistake in this part of 
his legislation. The oppressed all over the 



THE FOURTH LAW. 



83 



world are crying out for just such relief as the 
Hebrew lawgiver provided ages ago. It would 
be insanity for laboring people to give up the 
Sabbath. A Sabbath of some kind man will 
have, and must have, as long as he is man. It is 
as necessary to him as the air he breathes. 
Those who seek to blot out the Sabbath on any 
pretext whatever are enemies of mankind. A 
Sabbathless week is a hopeless week. To take 
away the Sabbath is to take away the jewel of 
days, and to add another crushing weight to the 
already heavy burden under which the poor 
laboring men, women, and children of the world 
are now groaning and toiling. 

Again, there is hardly anything more certain 
under the sun than that men and women need 
change. Monotony is the bane of life. One day 
is so much like another, week in and week out, 
year in and year out, that human existence is con- 
stantly in danger of sinking down into dreary, 
thoughtless, soulless routine. Life gets hack- 
neyed. There is no flash, no flush, no sudden 
tremor of spirit ; no unwonted beating of the 
pulse and brightening of the eye. 

Those who do no work need change, not less 
than those who do much work. They get op- 
pressed with themselves, and no wonder. They 
seek something new and different, almost any- 
thing new and different, by the sea, on the moun- 



84 



THE TEN LAWS. 



tains, and in the South ; hurrying from place to 
place, and living a busy, dizzy whirl of life, in 
ever new kinds of gayety, because they need 
change. 

It is because man feels, and always must feel, 
this need of change that the fourth law says, 
•• Eemember the Sabbath day. to keep it holy.'' 
-Make it a different day from the other six days, 
and a better day. Let it be a higher and finer 
day. — one of the days of the kingdom of God. 
Be God's guest. Think and talk with God on 
higher themes and diviner heights than those 
about which you are busied from Monday morn- 
ing to Saturday night. Breathe a different atmos- 
phere. Come up into the top of the mountain ; 
look away unto the hills, from whence cometh 
your help. 

Alan is not at his best when each day is like 
every other day. It is a final fact in mans con- 
sciousness that he cannot live the finest, largest 
life when he is living on a dead level. Hills are 
hard to climb, but they give to those who stand on 
their tops wide prospects. Once in every seven 
days we come to a hill. It is one of the hills of 
God. It is a pleasanter hill than Sinai, more like 
Pisgah, from whose top we may. like Moses, •• view 
the landscape o'er." 

The fourth law did not create this fact ; it 
found the fact deep in the heart of humanity, and 



THE FOURTH LAW. 



85 



shaped itself accordingly. You cannot leave out 
this fact without shrinking man to smaller dimen- 
sions. There is no beauty in a dead level. Bec- 
tilinear life is not the best kind of life. Man 
needs to get away from the sameness of days ; 
and so God, who knows man, filled every seventh 
day with the light and glory of heaven, — made it 
a type of heaven. It is a day for joy and glad- 
ness ; a day to be happy ; a day to lift up our 
voices and sing ; a day to forget the smoke and 
dust and din ; a day to escape from the whirling 
wheel of existence and leap up in a flame of de- 
votion and love. 

Every seventh day the Heavenly Father sa} r s to 
his children : " Come out of shops, stores, mills, 
and roaring furnaces ; away from the din of in- 
cessant hammers and the clash of tireless machin- 
ery, into the calm, quiet, holy atmosphere of the 
Sabbath day." 

" 0 day of rest and gladness, 0 day of joy and light ; 
O balm of care and sadness, most beautiful, most bright ; 
On thee, the high and lowly, bending before the throne, 
Sing, ' Holy, Holy, Holy/ to the great Three in One. 
The dawn of God's new Sabbath breaks o'er the earth again, 
As some sweet summer morning after a night of pain. 
It comes as cooling showers to cheer a thirsting land, 
As shade of clustered palm-trees 'mid weary wastes of sand." 

If it is not good for man to live a life in which 
each day is like every other day, and all the days 
one long unbroken succession of duplicates, 



86 



THE TEN LAWS. 



through which weary pilgrims plod on to the end, 
hardly able to distinguish one from another and 
keeping account of them with notches cut on a 
stick, doing the selfsame thing at the selfsame 
hour, in the selfsame place, on and on through six 
days and the seventh, then it is not good that 
man should be without the Sabbath, and it is very 
good that God said : " Six days shall be alike, and 
one day shall be different; six days shall be 
earthly, and one day shall be heavenly ; six days 
shall be days of toil and labor, and one day shall 
be a day of freedom from toil and labor; six 
days shalt thou labor and do all thy work, but 
the seventh is the Sabbath unto the Lord thy 
God." 

Once again, hardly anything is more certain 
under the sun than that men and women need 
help to rise, — help to rise above themselves, above 
the world, the cares of the world, and the riches 
of the world. It is so easy to be sordid ; so many 
things are pulling us down and clipping our 
wings. It is because man needs help to rise and 
to lift himself above himself that the Sabbath 
day comes and is to be hallowed. Washington 
Irving says : " Well was it ordained that the day 
of devotion should be a day of rest. The holy 
repose which reigns over the face of nature has 
its moral influence ; every restless passion is 
charmed down, and we feel the natural religion 



THE FOURTH LAW. 87 

of the soul gently springing up within us. For 
my part, there are feelings that visit me in a 
country church, amid the beautiful serenity of 
nature, which I experience nowhere else ; and if 
not a more religious, I think I am a better man on 
Sunday than on any other day of the seven." 

In such a world as this, where the best men are 
often hard put to it to maintain their integrity, to 
avoid becoming selfish and sordid, — where the 
prevailing influences seem to be against sweet- 
ness and light, — can we afford to dispense with a 
power so beneficent and elevating, so unworldly 
and gracious, as that of the Sabbath day ? If there 
are restless passions to be charmed down, anxie- 
ties to be allayed, ambitions to be quelled, and 
a fevered brain to be cooled, must we not make 
sure of the holy, heavenly calm that comes on the 
one day in seven of which Irving said, " I think 
I am a better man on Sunday than on any other 
day of the seven ? " What agency is so hallowed 
and humanizing, what relief so sweet and wel- 
come, as that which comes to us when stores and 
factories are closed and empty and we have one 
entire day free from worldly care ? 

On the other hand, it may be asked, is there 
not, after all, some real connection between Sab- 
bath-breaking and a downward career ; and is it 
quite safe to disregard the fourth commandment ? 
Sir Matthew Hale, the eminent jurist, has said 



88 



THE TEN LAWS. 



that of all the persons convicted of capital crimes 
while he was on the bench, few did not confess on 
inquiry that they began their career of wickedness 
by neglect of the duties of the Sabbath, and vicious 
conduct on that day. Concerning himself he 
added : " I have, by long and sound experience, 
found that the due observance of the Sabbath, 
and the duties of it, have been of singular comfort 
and advantage to me. The observance of that 
day has ever joined to it a blessing on the rest 
of my time." If a man so singularly pure and 
elevated found that keeping the Sabbath was 
attended with comfort and advantage, and that it 
brought blessings on the rest of his time, surely 
we may safely conclude that others not so favor- 
ably situated, and not so virtuously disposed, 
will also derive comfort and advantage from 
remembering the Sabbath day and keeping it 
holy. 

Once again, hardly anything is more certain in 
this world than that men and women need re- 
demption and eternal life. He who finds in man 
only weariness and restlessness has not gone very 
deep into the human heart. The young man who 
had great possessions, and who had kept all the 
commandments from his youth up, came to Jesus 
and asked what good thing he might do in order 
to inherit eternal life. There was in him a craving 
deeper than the craving for rest. Xo doubt he 



THE FOURTH LAW. 



89 



needed the rest of the Sabbath day ; no doubt he 
needed the change of the Sabbath day ; but these 
things were not enough. 

They are not enough for any man. Every man 
is aware of a deeper need within himself. He 
finds that he is often wrong, and needs to be set 
right. His powers have been not merely over 
used, but they have been badly used. He has 
done things which he ought not to have done, and 
not done things he ought to have done, and is 
sometimes ready to confess there is no health 
in him. Worse than all he has done or failed to 
do, is himself. He himself is wrong. A deep 
lethargy is upon his best nature. He does not 
love God with heart and mind and soul and 
strength ; and neither does he love his neighbor 
as himself. He is blind and needs to see. He 
is deaf and needs to hear. He is dull and stupid 
and needs to be roused and made to feel strongly, 
truly, and happily toward God and man. 

It is because man needs to be roused, quickened, 
and inspired, to be redeemed and made par- 
taker of eternal life, that the fourth law says, 
" Remember the Sabbath day, to keep it holy." 
Each Sabbath comes to men like a blessed angel 
from the presence of the Lord with healing in its 
wings. This day, "so calm, so cool, so bright," 
brings communion with God, forgiveness of sins, 
a baptism of grace and piety and peace, and lifts 



90 



THE TEN LAWS. 



men into fellowship with the Father and his Son 
Jesus Christ. 

The Sabbath brings cessation of toil, rest for 
weary limbs and tired arms ; but it brings infinitely 
more. It brings holy awe and reverent worship, 
grace and tenderness, new and deeper love for 
God, new and deeper love for man. If there 
were no Sabbath, there would be no open churches, 
no singing of hymns, no solemn music of the 
organ, no preaching of the gospel of the grace of 
God through our Lord Jesus Christ. It is hardly 
exaggeration to say that blotting out the Sabbath 
would be, in the spiritual and moral world, like 
blotting out the natural sun from the heavens 
in the physical world. All light, joy, and glad- 
ness would go with it. There are few of us, I 
hope, who cannot say that on Sunday we are, if 
not more religious, yet better men, than on any 
other day of the seven. It is God's reception 
day, when he takes the whole tired, sinful family 
of man into fellowship with himself. 

It may be that some one will ask : " Why have 
you given no rules ? Why have you not told us 
what we may do, and what we may not do ? If 
it is right to walk on the Sabbath, to read news- 
papers, and make visits ? " I might answer 
that I have not given you rules because I am not 
a pope, and have no right to lord it over your 
own sense of duty. Or I might answer that I 



THE FOURTH LAW. 



91 



have given you no rules because every man must 
make his own rules, and find out for himself, 
with much pain and solicitude, how he is best 
to keep holy the Sabbath day. 

I shall, however, give as my answer this, — 
That Christ gave no rules; and because I wish to 
be like my Master, I shall give no rules. If 
Christ had said something definite, matters 
would be greatly simplified. He did not, and 
apparently he would not„ At different times the 
people came to him and wanted him to lay down 
the law about keeping the Sabbath ; but he would 
not do it. He treated the matter in the most 
general way. Paul did the same, and said, " Let 
no man judge you in respect of the Sabbath 
days." He added, " He that regardeth the day, 
regardeth it to the Lord; and he that regardeth 
not the day to the Lord, he regardeth it not." 
Use a large and charitable considerateness. Be 
generous, consistent, and high-minded. It was 
on this very point of a strict narrow observance 
of the day that Christ had his bitterest conflict 
with the Pharisees. Because he would not ac- 
cept their rules, they called him a Sabbath- 
breaker and a blasphemer. 

I should as soon think of giving a man rules 
about loving his mother. Some things cannot 
be done by rule. No man can rightly and hap- 
pily keep the Sabbath day unless he loves the 



92 



THE TEN LAWS. 



Sabbath. Whatever takes away from the day, 
whatever lowers the day, robs it of its purity and 
difference, is to be dreaded. Whether it be 
reading Sunday papers, or taking walks, or visit- 
ing friends, or opening libraries, museums, art 
galleries, and national expositions ; whatever, in 
a word, has a tendency to destroy the distinction 
between the one day and the six days, is a loss 
and not a gain to man. I do not say that any or 
all of these uses of the day have that tendency ; 
but if they do, then they are an injury and not a 
benefit to humanity. Let us not be deceived. 
Nothing can make good the loss of that day 
which is a Sabbath unto the Lord. 

We see also that this fourth law is organic and 
structural in man. The law creates nothing. 
The Sabbath day does not stand upon an edict 
any more than marriage does, or than reverence 
to fathers does, but it stands upon the constitution 
of man. It is not law because it is in the code, 
but it is in the code because it is law. Moses 
found the law in human nature and acted accord- 
ingly. The law was made for man, not man for 
the law. Thus Christ said : " The Sabbath was 
made for man, not man for the Sabbath." 

The Sabbath was made not only for man, but 
it was made in man. It belongs to man, and can 
never cease to be till man ceases to be. The 
Sabbath is a necessity. It was discovered to be 



THE FOURTH LAW. 



93 



a necessity in France some years ago. It is not 
founded upon divine caprice, or upon any Mosaic 
whim, but upon facts as they exist and always 
have existed in human nature. It was ennobled 
and expanded by Jesus as all the other com- 
mandments were ennobled and expanded. He 
gave a larger and finer scope to the fourth law, 
as he did to the sixth and the seventh and the 
eighth. He put into it new, higher, and holier 
meaning ; but he left it as he found it, a funda- 
mental law grounded upon the constitution of 
man. 

And this duty, like all the others, is not soli- 
tary but social. It is something to me how you 
spend the Sabbath day, and it is something to 
you how I spend the Sabbath day. Each man 
affects his neighbor. John Bright once said 
in the House of Commons : " The stability and 
character of our country, and the advancement 
of our race, depend very largely on the mode 
in which the day of rest, which seems to have 
been specially adapted to the needs of mankind, 
shall be used and observed." No man can decide 
this question by himself alone, as if he were the 
only one to be considered. Blackstone says that 
the keeping of one day in seven is of admirable 
service to a state, considered merely as a civil 
institution. 

One may possibly think that he personally 



94 



THE TEN LAWS. 



would be better off without the Sabbath ; but 
would the community be better off without the 
Sabbath ? Is it right for him to consult only his 
own interests and pleasure ? Would the world 
be better off, and a safer place to live in ? 
Would nations and tribes and families be better 
off if the Sabbath was abolished, and all days 
were days of toil and earthly living ? Are we 
not better off in having one day for heavenly 
living ? 

We ought never to forget, and may always 
be inspired by remembering, that the Sabbath 
points forward to a time when the broken, im- 
perfect Sabbath of earth shall give place to the 
long, bright, and perfect Sabbath of heaven. It 
is the type of that rest which remaineth for the 
people of God. It is the morning star, heralding 
the coming of a day when sin, sorrow, and sighing 
shall flee away, and when men shall come from 
the East, and the West, and the North, and the 
South, and sit down in the everlasting day of 
the kingdom of God. 



VII. 

€fje fifty Statu. 



VII. 



THE FIFTH LAW. 



Honor thy father and thy mother ; that thy days may be 
long upon the land which the Lord thy God giveth thee. 



VERY man enters at birth into a little state, 



1 j sovereignty, or commonwealth of not less 
than three persons, — his father, his mother, and 
himself. There may be also brothers and sisters, 
but the father, the mother, and the child are 
enough to constitute a true and real sovereignty, 
or state. This state can never pass away, and no 
man can ever lose his place in it. No man can 
ever cease to be the child of his father. This 
fifth law of the ten great laws given to Moses 
on Mount Sinai is a law of the little state or 
commonwealth called the family, and tells fathers, 
mothers, and children how they may live wisely, 
rightly, happily, and prosperously together in the 
family. 

This little state, composed of father, mother, 
and child, or children, implies that the father 
and the mother shall receive honor from the sons 



Exodus xx. 12. 




7 



98 



THE IE\~ Laws, 



and daughters ; and that the sons and daughters 
shall render honor to the father and the mother. 
Those who wilfully fail in this natural and 
filial duty of giving honor to the father and 
mother draw down a weight of infamy upon 
themselves, weaken the power and blessing of 
parental authority, lower the sanctity of domes- 
tic life, and aim a blow at social and civil order 
in the state and the nation. 

This little state, set up in every household 
where there is father, mother, and child, plays a 
vital part in human history and progress. It is 
the unit of increase. God said to the first man 
and woman, " Be fruitful, and multiply, and re- 
plenish the earth." From one family other fami- 
lies grow. The race does not increase by units, 
but by families. The family is like the single 
cell of organized matter in physical life. This 
cell produces other cells like itself, in connection 
with itself, and thus builds up fibre and tissue. 
One family produces other families, and family 
is added to family, till tribes and clans are 
formed. 

The family is also the unit of organization. 
This shows very plainly in the ]STew England 
town meetings. These meetings are made up 
of the fathers of families, and those grown sons 
who may themselves be supposed to represent 
families. The town meeting is really a gather- 



THE FIFTH LAW. 



99 



ing of families, the fathers being delegates of 
those families. A number of families collected 
together form a town or village. A number of 
unmarried individuals living in one locality 
would not form a village. It would be a com- 
munity like the Shaker communities, or a 
monastic brotherhood. Unless fed from without, 
it would soon become extinct. Only groups of 
families can be organized together in tribes and 
nations. The family is therefore the unit of 
organization. 

One of our highest authorities on " Ancient 
Law " shows very clearly that society is not a 
collection of individuals, but a collection of fami- 
lies. The unit of society is the family. This 
unit never dies. It is handed down from father 
to son. This household unity explains why in 
ancient times the clan shared in the guilt of any 
member of the clan. A crime committed by one 
was imputed to all, and became a corporate crime. 
It explains also the Greek notion of an inherited 
curse. All these hints, and others which might 
be mentioned, show that the primary group is 
the family united under one father. A collection 
of families forms the gens, or house. A collection 
of houses forms the tribe. A collection of tribes 
forms the commonwealth. All ancient societies 
regarded themselves as proceeding from one 
common stock. The history of civil ideas begins 



100 



THE TEN LAWS. 



with the family, and is founded on a common 
lineage. Roman law rests upon this assumption. 
The family is emphasized. It has stamped itself 
upon all the great departments of jurisprudence. 
We are therefore justified in claiming that the 
family is the unit of social and civil organization. 

To tamper with the family, then, is to derange 
all unions of men with men in organic life. It is to 
endanger societ} T . It is to threaten law and order. 
It is really to commit a breach of the peace, or 
the crime of high treason against social human- 
ity, or the body politic. It is like the crime of 
one who alters fraudulently the unit of weight or 
measurement. All persons, having possessions 
or property to be weighed or measured, suffer 
in consequence of his act. Altering the unit 
of weight or measurement alters the value of 
their possessions. Or it is like the crime of 
the man who tampers with the unit of currency. 
He who alters the value of the single dollar 
alters the value of every sum of dollars, and 
makes other men richer or poorer. He who 
depreciates the dollar, robs every man who pos- 
sesses money . 

In the same way he who meddles with the 
family, who seeks to alter its relations, to impair 
parental authority or to diminish filial reverence, 
to confuse the limits of sovereignty and sub- 
jection in the family, commits a crime against 



THE FIFTH LAW. 



101 



government, against magistrates and all in author- 
ity, and aims a blow at the higher powers as 
ordained of God. This must be so, since the 
family is the seed, or germ, or unit out of which 
all authority, rule, and government have grown. 

Turning once more to this little independent 
state set up in every household, we see the 
difference between law and force. We control 
matter by force. We control mind by law. This 
little state in the household is the beginning and 
germ of rightful human authority. It is not 
merely a play upon words to say that the author 
of my existence has authority over me. The fact 
of fatherhood implies supremacy. If there are 
fathers, the children must give them reverence. 
The father may apply force to stubborn matter, 
and it yields, but that yielding is not obedience. 
Blasting rocks is not exercising authority, but 
using force. Vicious and wilful creatures, like 
horses and cattle, can be subdued by the wit, 
cunning, and force of man, but their subjection is 
not obedience. 

Only the willing surrender of personal choice 
and preference to rightful authority is obedience. 
Fathers have power over their sons ; but they do 
not force those sons if they are true sons. He 
who is the only true Son came to do the will 
of his Father and said, " Lo, I am come to do thy 
will, 0 God." He submitted to authority, and 



102 



THE TEN LAWS. 



not to force. This is the eternal reason behind 
the law. The fifth law was not made on Sinai. 
It was only spoken there. It was made in man, 
and belongs to man. It is part of his life, be- 
cause the son is related to the father, and comes 
from the father, therefore the law says, " Honor 
thy father and thy mother." It is natural law. 
To be without it, and to refuse to honor the father 
and the mother, is monstrous and unnatural. 
Both are to receive one and the same honor. We 
speak of the father and the authority of the 
father not to exclude the mother, but only be- 
cause the father is the expression of the su- 
premacy which resides in both the father and 
the mother. 

Several practical questions arise here and seem 
to need an answer. First, how far must the child 
obey the father and mother in order to honor the 
father and mother ? To obey is not the same as 
to honor. A father may require the child to 
murder, kill, steal, lie, or take God's name in 
vain, and then it seems to be the child's duty 
to honor the father by not doing as he says. An 
unwillingness in the child to commit these crimes 
reflects honor back on the parents. He honors 
his father by disobeying him ; and it is the only 
way in which such a father can be honored. 

It is true that in the New Testament the apos- 
tle says, " Children, obey your parents," but he 



THE FIFTH LAW. 



103 



adds, " in the Lord/' Children are to obey their 
parents in the Lord, according to the will of the 
Lord ; never outside the will of the Lord, or 
against the will of the Lord, in doing such things 
as are contrary to the truth. Jesus says, " He 
that loveth father or mother more than me is 
not worthy of me ; and he that loveth son or 
daughter more than me is not worthy of me ; 
and he that doth not take his cross and follow 
after me, is not worthy of me." No man honors 
either his father or his mother by doing an 
unholy deed even at their command. 

In early life the little child is always to obey 
because his own sense of right and wrong is not 
yet roused. He does not know right from 
wrong; and because he does not know right 
from wrong he may obey any command without 
sin. When he does learn right from wrong, 
then he can no longer obey even his father's 
command to do a wicked thing. He has learned 
that God is greater than his father ; that right is 
higher than his father. 

We may then assert that the only limit to 
obedience is sin. It may be inconvenient to 
obey; it may be hard to obey; it may seem 
useless to obey; it may seem unreasonable and 
dangerous to obey : but until it seems actually 
wicked to obey, it is the duty of the child to 
heed a father's commands. He who obeys only 



104 



THE TEN LAWS. 



in what appears to himself reasonable and right 
does not truly obey at all. God did not ordain 
the parental relation in order that fathers and 
mothers might give advice and make timid sug- 
gestions to their children, but he ordained that 
relation in order that fathers and mothers might 
regulate their households and preside in authority 
over them. 

It is better, therefore, to bear injustice than to 
be disobedient. Even capricious and unreason- 
able fathers and mothers are to be obeyed so long 
as obedience is possible. We are not to obey our 
fathers because they are wise fathers, but because 
they are fathers. The child may possibly be 
wiser than his father ; but the wiser he is. the 
more certainly he will be obedient. Obedience 
is wisdom. To submit to unnecessary restraints 
is to give the finest proof of filial virtue. This 
is that true submission to parents in the Lord 
which is right. 

The citizen may be wiser than the state, but 
he will not disregard the laws of the state : and 
the child may be wiser than his parents, yet in 
subjection to his parents. Jesus was in subjec- 
tion to his parents. The child, then, in order to 
honor the father must obey the father till he 
reaches the limit of sin. It is well also to 
remember that the child never ceases to be a 
child, and that full-grown men never appear 



THE FIFTH LAW. 



105 



more manly than when obeying their aged parents. 
While, therefore, we are to put a close construction 
on the law which says, " Honor thy father," but 
does not say, " Obey thy father; " while we are to 
take the law as we find it and to admit that the 
child can always honor, though he cannot always 
obey, — we are also to remember that honoring 
the father and mother means obeying the father 
and mother till obedience becomes criminal. 

A second question is this, How can children 
honor parents who do not deserve honor ? 
Sometimes sons and daughters are tempted to 
think that their fathers and mothers are not very 
honorable, and that therefore they cannot honor 
them. In some instances this means only that 
the parents are old-fashioned, uncultivated, behind 
the times, awkward in speech, clumsy in manner, 
and with disagreeable habits ; but it is always to be 
remembered that these same awkward and disa- 
greeable people are really the fathers and mothers 
of their sons and daughters, and that in nine cases 
out of ten they are more sensible, interesting, and 
worthy than those sons and daughters. Never 
forget that you are linked to your fathers and 
mothers by mysterious and influential relations. 
You are in the line of descent. From your 
fathers and mothers came your existence, the 
color of your eyes, the shade of your hair, the 
height of your stature, and, more than all, 



106 



THE TEN LAWS. 



the bent and tone of your moral and mental 
being. 

Or, put it in the other way, and suppose that 
fathers and mothers loved their children only 
when they were lovable, and delighted in them 
only when they were delightful. Many children 
would have to go unloved. In the eyes of a mother 
all daughters are beautiful, all sons clever and 
heroic ; but in the eyes of other people they are 
very likely commonplace and uninteresting. If 
sons and daughters are to love and honor only 
clever and beautiful fathers and mothers, then 
fathers and mothers are to cherish and protect 
only clever and beautiful sons and daughters. 
The rule works both ways. The fact probably 
is that we were not angelic children and did not 
have angelic parents. It is very fortunate for 
children that parents find in them a loveliness, 
wit, and grace which no one else dreams of. 
Blood is thicker than water. Fathers cling to 
worthless sons with a love which is blind to 
faults, which cannot be quenched, and which 
often seems to become more intense as there is 
less and less to deserve it. Were it not for this 
sentiment, society would fall to pieces and men 
become wild beasts. 

Admit that your father never saw a telephone 
or heard of a bicycle ; that he rode in an old- 
fashioned carriage or none at all ; that he lived 



THE FIFTH LAW. 



107 



in a house without modern improvements, and 
would have been dazzled with your electric light, 
— still, that father, without these things, lived a 
brave, true life, and was in his way a very grand 
sort of a man, perhaps doing more in the world 
and leaving behind a more lasting and salutary 
impression than any of his sons are likely to 
leave. 

We overrate ourselves and underrate our an- 
cestors. Disraeli is quoted by Dr. E. W. Dale, in 
his lecture on this law, as saying : " The invention 
of written language was a more wonderful thing 
than the invention of the electric telegraph, and 
the original contrivance of some of the common- 
est conveniences of civilized life, which are now 
known to every race not positively barbarous, 
was far more remarkable in its day than many 
of those discoveries which have filled our age 
with such unbounded self-admiration." 

There was splendid genius in the world before 
physical science came. 

Dr. Dale himself declares: "I think that it 
was a considerably greater achievement to write 
the Platonic dialogues than to invent a steam- 
engine, to construct the Aristotelian logic than 
to pierce the Isthmus of Suez. I think that 
John Milton was at least as wonderful a person 
as any modern scientific discoverer, and that 
Shakespeare was something more than the equal 



108 



THE TEN LAWS. 



of any of the scientific idols of our times. I, 
at least, would rather have been able to write 
s Comus ' or 6 Hamlet ' than to see my name at- 
tached to the most brilliant paper in the transac- 
tions of the Eoyal Society." 

With these sentiments we can agree. Honor 
was not born when this generation came into 
being. Our fathers have something to say for 
themselves. There were wise and mighty men 
among them. We sometimes take scientific men 
seriously to task because they suggest that pos- 
sibly we may be the descendants of monkeys, but 
I do not know how much better it is to believe 
that we are the children of fools. There is cer- 
tainly great wisdom, as well as piety, in the law 
which says, " Honor thy father and thy mother : 
that thy days may be long upon the land which 
the Lord thy God giveth thee." 

There is, however, the sad possibility that 
fathers and mothers may be not merely old- 
fashioned, awkward, and disagreeable, but that 
they may be unworthy, hard, tyrannical, — even 
vicious, drunken, and immoral. There are fa- 
thers who sneer at their children, even when 
they are already morbidly self-conscious ; ill-bred 
fathers, brutal fathers, unmerciful fathers, who 
show no natural consideration for the faults 
and follies of which their children are already 
ashamed ; who sometimes go so far as to speak 



THE FIFTH LAW. 



109 



contemptuously of personal defects, and remind 
their sons and daughters of mortifying failures 
by which they have already been sufficiently 
humiliated; who talk deridingly of pursuits in 
which their children take a romantic interest, 
and unkindly of friends to whom they are sin- 
cerely attached. 

Do such fathers deserve honor ? Have they 
not thrown away every chance of keeping the re- 
spect of their children ? One thing they have not 
thrown away, — that is, their fatherhood. They 
are still fathers. It may be hard for the children, 
but it is also noble for them to endure until 
endurance becomes intolerable. The respect of 
a pure, unselfish girl for a worthless father is one 
of the finest spectacles in the world. Drunken- 
ness and profligacy do not relax moral law. Vice 
and irreligion cannot release children from filial 
duty. They are to honor and even to obey until 
obedience becomes impossible and subjection un- 
endurable. 

Because the family is the unit of increase, the 
unit of organization, and the beginning of all 
rightful authority in the world, it follows that 
the welfare and stability of the state depends 
upon the welfare and stability of the family. As 
in physical life a diseased cell means a diseased 
organization, so in social and civil life, a dis- 
eased and disordered family means a diseased 



110 



THE TEN LAWS. 



and disordered state. Domestic purity and peace 
tend always to secure and maintain national 
purity and peace, but the case is stronger than 
that, for the family is, as we have seen, the be- 
ginning of all rightful authority. The very 
notion of authority comes from the family. Some 
one has said that " the corner-stone of the com- 
monwealth is the hearth-stone." Good sons make 
good citizens. One Spartan was worth ten other 
Greeks in battle because Spartan boys were 
trained to filial obedience. 

It is therefore a law that long national life will 
be enjoyed by those nations in which the spirit 
of filial obedience prevails. When parental au- 
thority is disregarded and children do not honor 
their fathers and mothers, the whole structure of 
society is threatened. Such nations fall to pieces. 
It might be shown historically that the faithful 
discharge of filial duties is the primary condition 
of permanent national existence. "Honor thy 
father and thy mother: that thy days may be 
long upon the land which the Lord thy God 
giveth thee." 



VIII. 
€f>e Sixty Eatd. 



VIII. 



THE SIXTH LAW. 



Thou shalt do no murder. — Exodus xx. 13. 
0 one who lives in the world, and sees what 



1 M is going on in the world, and thinks about 
what is going on in the world, can fail to get some 
hint of sacredness in man. He is a frail crea- 
ture, easily crushed, hurt in a thousand ways, — 
drowned in the sea, dashed on the rocks, burned 
in the fire. Nature gives no sign and destroys 
a man as indifferently as a tree, and yet we can- 
not help thinking that man is greater and more 
sacred than sea or earth or sky, — more sacred 
than all the forces of nature. 

We do not think merely that man's life is 
more sacred, but that man himself is more sacred ; 
that his life is sacred because he is sacred. When 
a fine vessel goes onto the rocks and is a total 
wreck, hammered by the dash and swell of an 
angry sea, we do not think of its costly carved 
work, its rich hangings, its valuable cargo and 
splendid machinery, but we think of the men, 




8 



114 



THE TEN LAWS. 



women, and children who were aboard ; and if 
they are safe, we care little for the rest. 

A few years ago a beautiful young girl threw 
herself from the steamer "Bristol," bound from 
New York to Fall Biver. The passengers on 
that steamer were more shocked than they would 
have been by the loss of any amount of merchan- 
dise. Let it be known in any town that human 
beings are perishing in a burning building, and 
everything else will be forgotten. Man's life is 
sacred because man is sacred. 

There is something mysterious and infinite in 
man, and for this reason life in him is of more 
value than life in other living creatures. In pro- 
portion as nations grow refined and elevated, they 
feel a deeper, holier reverence for man. Among 
barbarians human life is taken with almost wan- 
ton recklessness. In the lower grades of civili- 
zation it is held cheap, and the number of capital 
crimes" is numerous. Men were once condemned 
to death in England for stealing. As people rise 
in virtue and intelligence, they hold man and his 
life in ever greater and greater veneration. The 
punishment of death is now in Christian nations 
visited only upon those who are guilty of murder 
or high treason. This fact shows the sacredness 
connected with human life. 

It is, however, curious that the one thing least 
known and understood in all the world is life. 



THE SIXTH LAW. 



115 



We do not know what life is. We know the 
signs of life and the effects of life, but we do not 
know life. Scientific men have not been able to 
define it. The difference between a living and a 
dead body is very apparent, whether it be the 
body of man, bird, or beast ; but what makes that 
difference no one can tell. They say, " Life has 
gone ; " but what is life ? The living man could 
write poems, sing songs, paint pictures, and thrill 
the world ; he could win the hearts of thousands 
in a great city and make every man and woman 
in that city feel stronger and better for his 
presence ; but when death comes, he can no 
longer do any of these things. Men sob aloud 
as the body is borne past to its burial, but it 
makes no difference. The living bird can spring 
from its nest and rise higher and higher in the 
sky, pouring forth floods of melody, but death 
ends both the song and the flight. A living 
creature like the horse, pawing the ground in 
its strength, clothed with thunder, and smelling 
the battle afar off, is suddenly pierced by a 
bullet, and drops upon the ground dead. 

He who takes life, therefore, takes all that 
belongs to life, all that goes with life. He 
takes away from the world the song and flight 
of the bird, the strength and courage of the 
horse, the genius and aspiration of the man like 
Abraham Lincoln, which inspired and helped a 



116 



THE TEN LAWS. 



whole continent, — nay, the whole world. Such 
an act as the assassination of Garfield makes the 
world poorer. He who takes the humblest life 
takes he knows not what. He takes all that was 
hidden in that life. He " puts out the light " 
that burned brightly in some dwelling, and which 
no Promethean spark can restore. 

Because life in man is that which loves, hopes, 
thinks, feels, writes poems, paints pictures, and 
gives itself for wife, children, country, and kind, 
the sixth law says, " Thou shalt do no murder." 

Life comes from God. When the Lord God 
formed man out of the dust of the ground, he 
breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and 
man became a living soul. Somewhere in man's 
progress from dust up to manhood he got a breath 
from the presence of God. Heathen poets have 
known that in God man lives and moves and has 
his being, because man is the offspring of God. 
He is made in the image of God. Need we go 
farther to learn why there is sacredness in man 
and in the life of man ; and why, therefore, is it 
sacrilege to take his life ? 

The magnitude of the crime of murder is 
measured by the awful anguish and lonely misery 
of one who has committed it. Unless all his- 
tory has been misread and misunderstood, there 
is a blankness, dreariness, wretchedness, and dread, 
an aching void at the heart of a murderer, which 



THE SIXTH LAW. 



117 



defies expression, finds no relief, and is most like 
the ceaseless gnawing of the worm that never 
dies. Even in those cases where there has been 
great provocation, or where the deed was done 
in haste and hot blood, still the burden has 
proved like Cain's, greater than could be borne. 
It has sent men out as wanderers and vagabonds 
in the earth. It has cut them off from God and 
men and left them in the vacancy of an awful 
solitude broken only by the sound of that voice, 
which cries out to them from blood spilt on the 
ground. Such a being is at war with men and 
with God, and would, if it were possible, kill 
God. 

Let us now turn to some practical questions. 
Does this sixth law mean that no life is ever to 
be taken ? Some have thought so. They in- 
sist on the letter. They say, a burglar breaking 
into your house, or a murderer laying his hand 
on your life, is not to be killed ; armies invading 
your country are not to be repelled; convicted 
criminals are not to be executed, for the law 
says, "Thou shalt not kill." 

The New Version, however, is nearer the origi- 
nal, and in it we read, " Thou shalt do no murder." 
To kill is not always to murder. Persons who 
read this law in the Old Version are misled. 
They should remember that if life was never to 
be taken, it would be wrong to kill an ox or a 



118 



THE TEN LAWS. 



sheep for food, to catch fish out of the sea, 
to shoot a wolf prowling about your house, or to 
trample on a rattlesnake coiled and ready to 
strike. 

It cannot be that this law intends that no 
man shall ever be punished for any crime by 
death. There are many Jewish laws which in- 
flict death as a penalty. The worship of " other 
gods" was punished with death. The worship 
of graven images was punished with death. 
Blasphemy was punished with death. Sabbath- 
breaking was punished with death. Incorrigible 
disobedience to parents was punished with death. 
Murder was punished with death. Adultery 
was punished with death. All these laws were 
Jewish laws. 

The Jewish laws have passed away. We no 
longer stone adulterers nor Sabbath-breakers nor 
disobedient children. It is perhaps an open ques- 
tion whether the punishment of death ought 
ever to be inflicted. As nations rise in the scale 
of intelligence and virtue, they are more and 
more unwilling to take man's life even for great 
crimes. 

The eternal law which was given on Sinai, and 
which is constitutional in man, has not passed 
away, and cannot pass away. It belongs to man, 
and is written on his heart. While there may be 
times when it is necessary, wise, and right to take 



THE SIXTH LAW. 



119 



life in its lower forms, the life of birds, beasts, 
fish, and flowers ; while there may be times when 
it is necessary, wise, and right to take the life of 
men for desperate crimes against their fellow- 
creatures, or in self-defence, — it can never be wise 
or right to put small value on either human or 
creature life ; no good man will ever trifle with 
life, and will under no circumstances suffer him- 
self to do murder. 

Does this law mean that men are never to go to 
war ? Here again it should be remembered that 
the nation to which this law was given was a 
fighting nation from the beginning. Every man 
in it was a fighter. The people marched in 
battle array, and camped in military order. Their 
history is a history of wars and fightings. Moses 
himself prayed to the god of battles that the 
hosts of Israel might be victorious over their 
enemies. 

This law is a law for sovereigns and nations, 
as well as for individuals; it says to nations 
as well as to individuals, "Thou shalt do no 
murder/' War is sometimes murder. All unjust 
wars, all ambitious and aggressive wars, all con- 
flicts of armies with armies, waged for glory and 
renown, — these wars bring upon the nations en- 
gaged in them, and upon the rulers of those 
nations, the guilt of murder. 

But war is sometimes inevitable. National 



120 



THE TEN LAWS. 



life, as well as individual life, is a sacred and 
inviolable trust. Injustice, cruelty, and oppres- 
sion are to be resisted. The crimes of Xapoleon 
were justly punished when the allied armies of 
Europe forced him to surrender and shut him up 
on a lonely island. Our fathers were justified in 
calling for volunteers and equipping an army 
when the troops of King George marched against 
Lexington. So long as police are needed in our 
cities to preserve order, so long as judges are 
needed in our court-houses to execute judgment, 
and jails are needed to confine criminals, so long 
we may conclude that armies are needed in the 
world to fight against wrong and iniquity. The 
fierce fightings of Scottish Covenanters, the 
revolution under Cromwell, the battles fought by 
Washington, — all these may be spoken of as 
wars of the Lord ; and those who waged them did 
not incur the guilt of murder. 

Does this law apply to those put in charge of 
human life ? Great tenement houses are built 
so cheaply and carelessly that they tumble down 
on their inmates, and bury them beneath falling 
walls and burning timbers. Steamboats known 
to be unseaworthy navigate our waters and go 
out every season overloaded with passengers. 
Conductors and engineers whirl their trains into 
other trains, down precipices, and through open 
drawbridges. Horses with death in their heels 



THE SIXTH LAW. 



121 



are driven recklessly through the streets, or left 
unhitched before the house. Impure and decayed 
vegetables, tainted meats, and unwholesome sup- 
plies are offered for sale in the markets. Men are 
licensed to sell intoxicating liquor, knowing that 
its sale will result in murder and death. The 
atmosphere of a whole neighborhood is poisoned 
by foul sewerage. Has the sixth law anything 
to do with thus putting human life in jeopardy ? 

It was part of the Mosaic code that " if an ox 
were wont to push with his horns, and it hath 
been testified to the owner and he hath not kept 
him in, but that he hath killed a man or a woman, 
the ox shall be stoned and the owner put to 
death. " When an ox known to be vicious killed 
a man or a woman, the owner of that ox was 
deemed guilty of murder. Then it would appear 
that the owner of insecure tenement houses, or 
unseaworthy vessels, or recklessly handled trains, 
or dangerous horses, or decayed vegetables, or 
intoxicating liquors, or faithless corporations, 
would also be deemed guilty of murder. 

When two trains running at full speed crash 
together, kill, maim, and injure for life men, 
women, and children, and it is found that the 
driver has been kept on his engine by a grasping 
company for fourteen or sixteen hours ; or that 
the switch-tender was drunk ; or that the train 
despatcher had been doing double duty and taking 



122 



THE TEN LAWS. 



care of too long a line, — Mosaic law would hold 
somebody accountable for the lives lost and the 
injuries inflicted. This law says to the chemist 
who fraudulently adulterates his drugs, or sells 
a dangerous baking-powder; to the clerk who 
makes a careless blunder in mixing medicines ; 
to the opera-house owner who builds so poorly 
that a fire is liable to occur at any time ; to the 
hotel-keeper with sleepy watchmen in the corri- 
dors by night ; to the builder of insecure walls ; 
to the engineer who recklessly puts on the pres- 
sure of steam; to any man who needlessly or 
wickedly risks his neighbor's life, — " Thou shalt 
do no murder." 

It may possibly be asked, What has a company 
of Christian people, in these times, to do with the 
law against murder ? There is no murder in our 
hearts; we do *not kill people. No doubt the 
world is better than it was in the days of Moses, 
and is growing better every year. Within our 
own times, duelling has ceased. "When Queen 
Victoria came to the throne, and for years after, 
the duelling system was in full vogue. It was an 
episode in contested elections. It was resorted 
to for deciding a half-drunken quarrel. Most of 
the eminent statesmen who were prominent in 
the earlier part of the Queen's reign fought duels. 
Peel and O'Connell made arrangements for a 
meeting. Disraeli challenged O'Connell, or any 



THE SIXTH LAW. 



123 



of the sons of O'Connell. The great agitator had 
killed his man. Mr. Roebuck had gone out and 
Mr. Cobden received a challenge, with the good 
sense and courage to laugh at it." 

The world is growing better. A truer civiliza- 
tion begins to prevail. Life is held as a more 
sacred thing. The " code " is no longer a code of 
honor. To take life even in a duel is disgraceful. 
The moral sense of mankind has become so sensi- 
tive in regard to the value and sacredness of life 
that we refuse to put a terribly injured man out 
of his misery, even when he begs for death. God, 
who gives life, may alone take back that which 
he has given. 

It might be interesting to know how far this 
great change in public opinion is due to the faith- 
ful labors and teachings of the ministers of Jesus 
Christ, who have not ceased to make known the 
will of God ; and who believe that his laws are to 
be obeyed, and that only when they are obeyed 
can either nations or individuals have peace and 
honor. While, however, we may believe that the 
world is growing better, even Christian men can- 
not yet do without these great laws given to 
Moses on Sinai, and written by the finger of God 
upon human hearts. There are volcanic agencies 
hidden in man's nature. There are sleeping pas- 
sions in every human soul, which may in a 
moment be roused into fury. We need to hear 



124 



THE TEN LAWS. 



this law and to believe that it is a true law and 
not a lie ; we need to have it written upon our 
hearts, and to pray, " Incline our hearts to keep 
this law." Dark and horrible imaginations some- 
times take possession of a human heart ; it 
seems to be set on fire of hell. The secret work- 
ing of iniquity is a mystery. No murderer ever 
thought himself a murderer. He thinks himself 
like other men, and he is like other men. The 
same nature is in us all. 

Because the same nature is in us all, we need 
to hear this law, " Thou shalt do no murder." 
The roots of sin bury themselves deep. Jesus 
said : " But I say unto you, that every one who is 
angry with his brother shall be in danger of the 
judgment ; and that whosoever shall say to his 
brother, Kaca, shall be in danger of the council ; 
and whosoever shall say, Thou fool, shall be in 
danger of the hell of fire." The hell of fire is 
already kindled and burning in his breast. Jesus 
tells us that we shall be called into account for 
the first rising of anger, — for the bitter curse 
that escapes our lips, for the mockery and scorn 
of our brother when we say to him, " Thou fool." 

Bad thoughts start out into bad words. Secret 
fires burst forth into open flames. No man knows 
what he may possibly do. It is good for us, then, 
to be warned of these bad thoughts and secret 
fires ; to be told that we are in the same danger 



THE SIXTH LAW. 



125 



and share the same nature with the murderer ; 

that we may be tempted as he is tempted, and 
need to hear as he needs to hear, even though we 
are good, kind, Christian people, gathered in a 
church, the old law which says, " Thou shalt do 
no murder." 



IX. 

€f>e £et»entf> Eato, 



IX. 



THE SEVENTH LAW. 

Thou shalt not commit adultery. — Exodus xx. 14. 

TT^E have seen in our study of the fifth law 
V V that every man at birth enters into a 
little commonwealth of not less than three per- 
sons, — his father, his mother, and himself; and 
we are now called to notice, in our study of the 
seventh law, that most men and women, on 
reaching manhood and womanhood, enter for the 
second time, by marriage, into another little com- 
monwealth like the first, consisting in its perfect 
form of father, mother, and child, or children. 
It may perhaps be said that this little common- 
wealth is a true and real commonwealth without 
children, but it is not the ideal and completed 
commonwealth. Children are necessary to round 
out a full circle of human relationships. 

It is common to suppose that men and women 
enter into this second little commonwealth of 
their own free will and choice. I am inclined 
to believe that it is a truer and profounder view 
of marriage to hold with others that men and 

9 



130 



THE TEN LAWS. 



women are drawn into it by forces mightier than 
themselves. The life of the race is stronger 
than the life of the individual. The instinct of 
marriage is planted deep in human nature ; it is 
a divine instinct. Marriage is more than a con- 
tract; it is more than an agreement between 
contracting parties ; it is not secular, but sacred ; 
it is not choice, but destiny. There is great 
truth in the old idea that marriage is a holy 
sacrament. Paul compares it to the union of 
Christ and his church, and says that in both of 
these unions there is mystery. 

Marriage is more than a compact between con- 
senting parties, because it is a vital process and 
operation of nature joining together or grafting 
the man and the woman, to form a family. 
Where men and women are, marriage is inevi- 
table. It is no mere sentiment which says, " Two 
hearts that beat as one ; " it is a divine arrange- 
ment. The family, as we have seen, is the unit of 
increase. The race grows by families, and not 
by individuals. The family is like the single 
cell of organized matter in physical life, which 
produces other cells in connection with itself, 
and thus builds up fibre and tissue. One family 
produces other families till tribes and clans are 
formed. It is also the unit of organization. 
True society is composed not of unmarried in- 
dividuals, but of groups of families. 



THE SEVENTH LAW. 



131 



The marriage bond, then, is sacred. It is a 
bond that can never be broken, though it may be 
disregarded and violated. It is a state or con- 
dition of life into which one may enter, but 
from which he can never go out. Each says to 
the other, "till death us do part;" and this, 
not by agreement of society or mutual consent, 
but by the laws of life. 

The husband who leaves his wife, or is in any 
way unfaithful to her, the wife who leaves her 
husband, or is in any way unfaithful to him, 
aims a blow first at the family, and then through 
the family at the whole structure of human 
society. Whatever weakens and dishonors the 
family weakens and dishonors all unions of 
families which may be formed among men. 
When a fountain is corrupted, all the stream 
flowing from that fountain is corrupted. 

A degraded family means a degraded nation. 
To tamper with the family, I repeat, is to en- 
danger society ; to threaten law and order ; to 
commit a breach of the peace, or the crime of 
high treason against social humanity. It is, as 
I have said, like the crime of the man who 
tampers with the unit of currency. He who 
alters the value of a single dollar alters the 
value of every sum of dollars, and he who med- 
dles with the family meddles with every pos- 
sible combination of families. 



132 



THE TEN LAWS. 



So we see that not only do the guilty parties 
suffer, but all parties suffer. It is like a taint 
in the blood which affects the entire body. The 
family is to the race what the blood is to the 
human body. He who inoculates a man's blood 
injures his whole body, and he who poisons the 
family contaminates the race. The crime is of 
such a nature that it cannot be hidden or sup- 
pressed. It is more certain to come out than 
murder. Its consequences appear in unexpected 
places. 

It is not merely that a bad husband is likely to 
be a bad citizen, — which is of course true, — but 
it is that in being a bad husband he has already 
done that, even if he does not become a bad citizen, 
which will certainly strike an evil through the 
whole body politic. 

If a few letters are taken away from the 
alphabet, many words in the language to which 
that alphabet belongs are broken to pieces and 
can no longer be formed ; and if some of the 
elements of the family are denied, disowned, and 
trampled upon, corresponding elements in the 
larger life of humanity are also perverted and 
violated. 

We have seen that the fifth law guards the 
family from dishonor by unworthy children, and 
in the same way the seventh law guards the 
family from dishonor by unworthy fathers and 



THE SEVENTH LAW. 



133 



mothers. As children bring disgrace upon their 
parents by irreverence, and inflict a wound upon 
the family ; so parents bring disgrace upon their 
children by unfaithfulness to each other, and 
inflict a not less serious wound upon the family. 
Children are to honor their parents, and those 
who do not, commit a crime against both the 
family and the state; husbands are to honor 
their wives, and wives are to honor their hus- 
bands, and those who do not, commit a crime 
against both the family and the state. So vital 
and sacred is this little commonwealth that law 
protects it on every side from assault and 
injury. 

In this little commonwealth which is the unit 
of increase and organization there are always 
two elements ; that is, the male and the female. 
You can no more have a family without the 
union of male and female than you can have a 
drop of water without the union of hydrogen 
and oxygen. Male and female created he them ; 
they are one. The duality is a unity, and the 
unity is a duality. Failure, then, or faithlessness 
in this relation is something more than a crime 
against the family and state; it is a crime against 
individual men and women ; it is an assault on 
true manhood and true womanhood the world 
over. There are some sins that hurt only the 
sinner, and there are others which spread out 



134 



THE TEN LAWS. 



and reach everywhere and hurt everybody. This 
sin works like a leaven of wickedness. It lowers 
the moral tone of universal and common human- 
ity. When the tide ebbs from one harbor on 
our coast, it ebbs from every other harbor and 
sinks to one common level ; and when purity is 
lowered and defiled in one home or heart, it is 
lowered and defiled in every home and heart. 

The man and the woman are joined together 
in the family in order that each may be perfected 
in the other, and completed in the other, and 
not that either may be lost in the other. Man- 
hood and womanhood are not extinguished but 
glorified by marriage. They are intensified. 
Each supplements the other. Strength and cour- 
age are married to tenderness and love. 

" He is the half part of a blessed man, 
Left to be finished by such as she ; 
And she a fair divided excellence, 
Whose fulness of perfection lies in him." 

This solemn union has in it therefore untold 
possibilities for both good and evil. By so much 
as it can exalt manhood and womanhood, by so 
much can it depress manhood and womanhood. 
The ebb and flow of the tide are equal. As no 
relation can so idealize "both men and women, so 
no relation can so demonize both men and 
women. It can raise them to heaven or sink 
them to hell. It has been tersely said that 



THE SEVENTH LAW. 



135 



a there are two rocks in the world on which the 
soul must either anchor or be wrecked. The one 
is God ; the other is the sex opposite itself. The 
human soul anchored upon God lives the blessed 
life; the human soul dashed against God is 
broken to pieces. The man who reveres woman- 
hood, and has unshaken trust in the glory of 
womanhood ; or the woman who reveres manhood, 
and has unshaken trust in the glory of manhood, 
enjoys a blessedness second only to the blessed- 
ness of salvation. The man or the woman who 
has lost faith in the sex opposite itself, and finds 
no worth or nobility in that sex, endures a woe 
second only to the ruin of everlasting perdition." 

We see then why it is that unmarried men and 
women are deeply interested in the sanctity of 
the marriage bond. Every married woman who 
is true to herself and her sphere reflects new 
splendor upon those who are not married; and 
every one who is false to herself and her sphere 
tarnishes the lustre of a common sisterhood. 

Every married man who is a true and loyal hus- 
band honors other men who are not married, and 
raises the average of manliness, virtue, and chiv- 
alry ; while every married man who is a false and 
unworthy husband degrades his fellow-men with 
himself, and lowers the standard and tone of mas- 
culine excellence, truth, and dignity in a common 
brotherhood. The glory of womanhood is tar- 



136 



THE TEN LAWS. 



nished in every faithless wife, and the glory of 
manhood is tarnished in every faithless husband. 
This fact perhaps explains why it is that each 
sex resents most deeply the sins committed by 
its own members. Women find it hard to for- 
give false wives, and men with any high sense 
of honor find it hard to forgive false husbands. 

There is a community of interest in each sex. 
Male and female created he them. The glory of 
the one is unlike the glory of the other. Each 
is the complement of the other. Each answers 
to the other. They are like the antiphonal 
halves of a great choir. They are the opposite 
poles of a common humanity. The qualities 
admired in one are not admired in the other. A 
mannish woman or a womanish man is a detested 
creature. A true wife shares the glory and 
beauty of her character with every woman, mar- 
ried or unmarried, and is the type and ideal of 
her sex ; and a true husband shares the glory 
and strength of his character with every man, 
married or unmarried, and is the type and ideal 
of his sex. The marriage bond is sacred for 
wedded and unwedded alike. 

It need hardly be said that while domestic 
infidelity is a crime which reaches everywhere and 
hurts everybody, it hurts most those who are 
guilty. Upon them comes the weight of penalty. 
It brings reproach, disgrace, and dishonor; it 



THE SEVENTH LAW. 



137 



leaves a stain upon the soul itself which cannot 
be wiped away. History tells us that it is followed 
by retribution, disease, misery, and death. 

It was so with the Jewish king who committed 
both murder and adultery. David was made to 
feel all his life long, and sometimes to acknowl- 
edge with bitter tears and loud cries, that to 
dishonor the wife of a poor soldier, and then get 
him killed in battle, was a piece of infamous, 
dastardly wickedness. It was followed by no 
light and easy punishment, but by a heavy and 
tremendous punishment, such as David was 
hardly able to bear. The ingratitude of his 
children, the rebellion of his people, taught him 
in his lonely exile how deeply he had sinned 
against man and God. 

Greek tragedy tells us how an awful vengeance 
followed and tracked the footsteps of those who 
had been guilty of violating the sanctity of 
wedlock. One can hardly fail to be aware that 
Greek manners, combining as they did both manly 
and womanly qualities, were formed largely by the 
conjugal relation, and that the degeneration of 
those manners can be traced mainly to the vio- 
lation of that sacred relation. 

Any unfaithfulness upon the part of either 
husband or wife to the rights and duties of this 
little commonwealth consisting of father, mother, 
and children is a crime against posterity. It 



138 



THE TEN LA^S. 



not only reaches out sidewise everywhere and 
hurts all the men and women living at the same 
time in the world, but it reaches on lengthwise 
into the future and hurts little children who 
may be born into the world. 

Fathers owe something to their children. 
Mothers are bound by new and sacred ties. It 
may be said of them, as it cannot be said of 
others, that henceforth they live not unto them- 
selves. John Fiske has shown, in his " Destiny of 
Man," how full of meaning is the period of 
infancy in man. Animals are born nearly 
perfect. They are able to take care of them- 
selves almost as soon as they begin to live. 
Man has a long period of weakness, helplessness, 
and ignorance, when he must be cared for by the 
parent. Heredity does more for the animal 
than for man. The animal is educated before he 
is born, and man is educated after he is born. 

The higher we rise in the scale of being, the 
more important becomes this early period of 
dependence. Less of education comes before 
birth, and more of it after birth. The child is 
hardly more than a mass of jelly, — palpitating 
flesh and blood. It starts in life able to do only 
a few things. Man begins life as an infant, to 
be watched and fed. 

When, therefore, any husband leaves any wife, 
or any wife leaves any husband, they not only 



THE SEVENTH LAW. 



139 



aim a blow at the family, at society, at indi- 
vidual men and women in the world, but they aim 
a blow at their own helpless little ones. Who 
has not read heart-rending stories of children, 
tossed about and beaten hither and thither, 
taken into court and handed over from one 
guardianship to another, till all sense of child- 
hood, home, and filial affection must have been 
dulled, if not lost. The story is a pathetic one. 
The appeal might soften a heart of flint. 

Animals do not neglect and desert their young. 
The deer will fight for her fawn ; the bird will 
toil for her nestlings, and no alluring voice can 
call her away from domestic cares; the spider 
will rather die than drop her sack of eggs. Is it 
strange, then, that we call the conduct of parents 
who consent to shatter the little commonwealth, 
and imperil the welfare of its helpless members, 
unnatural, inhuman, and monstrous ? If any one 
should say that the crime named in this law may 
be committed without shattering the home, I 
reply that only the mockery and skeleton of 
the home is left. It is a ghastly home. 

When, therefore, we consider the evils and 
misfortunes that fall with heavy and crushing 
weight upon defenceless and innocent little ones 
because this seventh law is violated by their 
parents, the words of Jesus come unbidden to our 
minds, "And whosoever shall cause one of these 



140 



THE TEN LAWS. 



little ones that believe on me to stumble, it were 
better for him if a great millstone were hanged 
about his neck, and he were cast into the sea." 

But there is another evil under the sun, which 
falls on men in the world when the marriage 
vow is broken. Children are born not within 
the sacred shelter and precincts of home and 
inside the lawful bounds of holy wedlock; but 
they are born into this wide waste of universe, 
sole and solitary atoms ; waifs, tossed out upon 
life's cold charity from the unknown; having 
neither father nor mother, sister nor brother, 
kith nor kin ; to live and die by themselves ; 
belonging to the race, and yet having no author- 
ized place in it. 

They came into the world not of their own 
choice, and they must manage to get on in it, and 
finally to get out of it, without those blessed 
helps that come to happier children found in 
the nurseries and round the bright firesides of 
domestic sanctuaries, where the husband honors 
the wife and the wife honors the husband. If 
there is any thought which can make the life 
of sinners against the seventh law haggard 
and miserable, and which can waken in them 
undying remorse, it must be the thought of 
the poor and lame substitutes for God's homes 
where foundlings are gathered and herded like 
forsaken lambs in common open pasture. 



THE SEVENTH LAW. 



141 



The seventh law allows us to make no distinc- 
tion between the man and the woman. One is as 
guilty as the other. For myself I would not 
dare lessen by so much as a feather's weight the 
burden of shame and sorrow which falls upon 
any wife who is unfaithful to her husband ; but 
I would wish that the same burden of shame and 
sorrow might fall on any husband who is unfaith- 
ful to his wife. 

It may perhaps be true that the loss of 
womanly purity is a more deadly evil to the 
world than the loss of manly purity. The re- 
sults may be more dreadful. History seems to 
tell us that most women can sink lower than 
most men, because most women can rise higher 
than most men. When the very sweetness of 
life is turned to bitterness ; when the very purity 
of life is turned to corruption ; when the place of 
love, which is a woman's heart, becomes the 
place of lust, — the worst has happened. But for 
all that, it is yet true that the law makes no dif- 
ference between the guilt of the husband and the 
wife. The sin of the one, as well as the sin of 
the other, should be followed by the world's con- 
demnation and scorn ; the finger of loathing and 
contempt which is pointed at the one should be 
pointed at the other. 

I have not spoken of the deadly effect of this 
sin upon moral character, and shall only allude 



142 



THE TEN LAWS. 



to it. It blights and ruins character, and burns 
out of the heart everything pure and good. 

Sensual indulgence weakens and depraves 
the will, blunts and stultifies the finer moral 
faculties, deadens and dulls the whole spiritual 
nature, sinks man and woman into animalism, 
darkens the conscience, and makes man insen- 
sible to lofty motives, generous feelings, lessens 
his power of prompt and decisive resistance to 
evil, and renders him less and less capable of 
knowing and loving and choosing the good. 
This vice is the vice of a swinish nature, and 
those who are guilty of it must be lashed by the 
furies. To them the divine angel must say, — 

f< Thy choice was earth ; thou didst attest 
'Twas fitter spirit should subserve 
The flesh than flesh refine to nerve 
Beneath the spirit's play. . . . Thou art shut 
Out of the heaven of spirit ; glut 
Thy sense upon the world." 

Is there, then, no word of hope in this law ? 
Must they who have failed to keep it sink down 
into a bottomless gulf? There is, I believe, no 
end of hope in this law. It is bright with prom- 
ise. Who gave this law? Why was it given? 
What is its character ? Paul answers and tells 
us that it is holy and just and good. " Is the 
law sin ? God forbid. I had not known sin ex- 
cept through the law ; for I had not known covet- 



THE SEVENTH LAW. 



143 



ing, except the law had said, Thou shalt not 
covet." 

He who gives the law, and loves the law, and 
writes the law upon our hearts, watches over 
every husband and every wife. He cares for 
the peace and purity of every family. He will 
send his law, like a sharp sword, piercing to 
the dividing asunder of soul and spirit, and the 
joints and marrow. He will discover sin and 
drag it out into the light. It is a mercy that we 
cannot hide from God and his law. To escape 
detection is not good, but evil. It is the worst 
evil that can befall a man to have his sin un- 
known. Jesus tells us how this law probes the 
heart and finds the secret lusts which work there, 
prompting a man to dishonor himself and his fel- 
low-creature. The deed of darkness may be 
hidden from man, but cannot be hidden from 
God. His law will search it out, and abate no 
part of the penalty. He himself will drive out 
the foul spirit from husband or wife, and give 
instead a holy and pure spirit. He will not have 
any man or woman rest under a curse so terrible 
as to be left in their sin. He will warn them of 
sin, and make them know sin, and raise them out 
of it, as he did the Jewish king who cried in his 
distress, " Create in me a clean heart, 0 God ; 
and renew a right spirit within me." There is 
no end of hope in the law. 



144 



THE TEN LAWS. 



Jesus, who understood the law and fulfilled the 
law as it was never understood and fulfilled, 
came early one morning into the temple. Scribes 
and Pharisees were there, and they brought a 
woman taken in adultery. The law of Moses 
was that she should be stoned. This they men- 
tioned, and then asked, What say est thou of her ? 
They were tempting him. " But Jesus stooped 
down, and with his finger wrote on the ground. 
But when they continued asking him, he lifted 
up himself, and said unto them, He that is without 
sin among you, let him first cast a stone at her. 
And again he stooped down, and with his finger 
wrote on the ground. And they, when they heard 
it, went out one by one, beginning from the eldest, 
even unto the last : and Jesus was left alone, 
and the woman, where she was, in the midst. 
And Jesus lifted up himself, and said unto her, 
Woman, where are they ? Did no man con- 
demn thee ? And she said, No man, Lord. 
And Jesus said, Neither do I condemn thee : 
go thy way; from henceforth sin no more." 



X. 

1 

€&e <£i0f>tJ> Sato. 



10 



X. 



THE EIGHTH LAW. 

Thou shalt not steal. — Exodus xx. 15. 

EVERY man born into the world has a right 
to own and control himself, and he has a 
right to own and control certain things besides 
himself. He has a right to own and control his 
time and strength, the things he makes with his 
hands or finds out by his wits, the food he eats, 
and the clothing he wears. This right to own and 
control certain things besides himself does not 
come from the state, although it is guarded and 
secured by the state. It cannot be taken away 
from him except for good reason. 

The fundamental law of this land — that is, the 
Declaration of Independence — says, " We hold 
these truths to be self-evident, that all men are 
created equal ; that they are endowed by their Crea- 
tor with certain inalienable rights; that among 
these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of hap- 
piness." Such things therefore as a man needs 
in order to enjoy life, liberty, and the pursuit of 



148 



THE TEX LAWS. 



happiness are the things which he has a right to 
own and control. The safeguards of law are 
thrown round a man's possessions, in order that 
he may own and control certain things besides 
himself. Law does not create property. Man 
creates property in the sweat of his brow, and 
with the toil of his hands. Law protects prop- 
erty and secures a man in the use and enjoyment 
of it. 

The question of how many things, and what 
things, and what value of things each man has a 
right to own and control is not yet settled, and 
does not seem likely soon to be settled. The 
right of any man to hold vast estates, including 
hill and dale, forest and plain, while other men 
have no foot of land to stand upon, or to gather 
fruit from, or to be buried in, has been challenged 
and denied. The right of any man to hold many 
millions of dollars, not as a public trust, but as 
a private fund, to be conveyed on his death, by 
will, to children, and no part of it to be used for 
the general good, has been challenged and denied. 
No limit, however, to the sum total of things 
which a man may own and control has yet been 
found or fixed ; but such a limit there is, and 
inside of this limit every man born into the 
world has a right to own and control certain 
things besides himself. 

This right exists in God, and was created with 



THE EIGHTH LAW. 



149 



man. Men are endowed " by their Creator with 
certain inalienable rights." This is one of them. 
Man has a right to the bread which he earns in the 
sweat of his brow ; he has a right to those things 
which are needed in making manhood. These 
rights, like all others, are in God. Long before 
this eighth law was given, Jacob learned in that 
place where he had a dream that all rights, pos- 
sessions, and holdings which he had or which any 
man had, or ever should have, are rights in God, 
and from God and with God. 

Man possesses nothing apart from God; his 
title to the earth, to life, to all the things that go 
with life and make life worth living, is in God. 
The Lord God said to Jacob, " The land whereon 
thou liest, to thee will I give it, and to thy seed." 
Jacob was taught that life is a lease from God 
and the earth a trust from God. 

Because man has this right from God to own 
and control certain things besides himself, the 
eighth law says, "Thou shalt not steal." It is to 
be noticed, however, that only one law out of ten 
laws relates to what a man has and owns, — to his 
houses, lands, goods, and chattels. Nine of the 
ten laws concern what a man is, and what he does 
with himself, — with his brain, his heart, his 
tongue, and his will ; they concern worship and ser- 
vice, the holy name and holy time, the reverence 
of children for their parents, the sacredness of 



150 



THE TEN LAWS. 



human life, the purity of husband and wife, truth- 
telling and a contented spirit. Only four words 
of the Decalogue are devoted to property. It is 
often said that the spirituality of the Lord's 
prayer is shown in the fact that only one petition 
of seven asks for daily bread or for temporal 
material blessings. There is a proportion in 
things. God cares for physical life and provides 
for it ; but he cares more for spiritual life. 
The same proportion holds in the Decalogue. 
The high ethical character of this code appears 
in the like fact that only one law out of ten 
treats of property. There are three hundred 
words in the Decalogue, and only four of them 
relate directly to the tenure and transfer of 
property. God thus teaches us that while he cares 
for the possessions of man, he cares very much 
more for the man himself ; and that he cares for 
the possessions only because they make or mar, 
help or hinder, heal or harm the man himself. 

One law, however, is enough to show that God 
admits the fact of ownership. All that a man 
has in cattle and substance, in houses and lands, 
and stocks and bonds, which was come by fairly 
and honestly and not with violence or fraud, he 
has a right to own and control. He will be called 
to account for the manner in which he owns and 
controls. Moral law deals with the duties of 
ownership ; moral law judges and condemns the 



THE EIGHTH LAW. 



151 



prodigal and the spendthrift no less than the miser 
and the skinflint. It warns men that they are 
stewards and must give account of their steward- 
ship. In order that they may give an account of 
their stewardship, emphasis is put upon property, 
and each man is told to keep his hands off that 
which is owned and controlled by other men. 

This law, therefore, brings God down to man, 
and lifts man up to God. It makes life sweet 
and wholesome. It takes away the sordidness of 
possession. 

It somehow makes man feel that God and he 
own things together. Whether each man may 
rightfully own land in severalty, or all men own 
it together in common, as many modern thinkers 
claim, still in either case the title to it is a divine 
title, and the tenure is in God. Personal prop- 
erty becomes sacred and a means of grace. In an 
address before the International Congregational 
Council in London, in 1891, Dr. Dale said: 
" There is a saintliness of the bank, of the ex- 
change, of the court of justice, of the newspaper 
office and of parliament, as well as of the cloister ; 
of the laboratory, the painting room, and the uni- 
versity, as well as of the church; a saintliness of 
the merchant, the manufacturer, the tradesman, 
and the mechanic, as well as of the apostle and 
the preacher ; and we shall not discharge our full 
duty as ministers or churches unless we make it 



152 THE TEN LAWS. 

apparent that, as the great forces of nature, which 
are but forms of the eternal power of God, are 
present and active in every region of the material 
universe, so the divine life which dwells in man 
is to be present and active in all the infinite varie- 
ties of human effort and experience." 

Because life, in all its lower ranges of bank, 
house, market, and exchange, has this saintliness 
of which Dr. Dale speaks, therefore the eighth 
law says, " Thou shalt not steal." 

He who breaks this eighth law and takes that 
which is not his own, is guilty of an act which 
makes the race poorer, which hampers industry 
and tends to arrest production. If men have no 
reasonable degree of certainty that they will be 
suffered to own and control the things which they 
make with their hands or find out by their wits, 
they will be tempted to cease working with their 
hands or thinking with their brains. It was so 
during the French Revolution ; it has always been 
so in every period of violence and disorder. If the 
farmer who ploughs the land, sows the seed, and 
cultivates the growing grain, has no reasonable 
security that he will also be permitted to reap the 
ripened harvest, he will be likely to desert the 
plough, and suffer his fields to lie unfilled. 

Savage tribes own and control but few things. 
When all things are owned in common, there are 
not many things to own. Neither wigwams nor 



THE EIGHTH LAW. 



153 



their contents are worth stealing. There is noth- 
ing to stimulate production. They live from 
hand to mouth and take what they find. One 
spot is as good as another. So long as cattle and 
sheep are likely *to be swept off any night by 
marauding tribes, they will not be herded and 
tended. These untutored barbarians prefer to 
pick up a precarious subsistence by living on 
roots, herbs, deer, rabbits, fish, and fowl such as 
can be shot or baited, to raising harvests or col- 
lecting flocks which may any time go to feed their 
enemies. 

An apple-tree in the highway, clubbed by pass- 
ing tramps and stripped of its half-ripe fruit, is 
very unlike an apple-tree sheltered and watched 
in some private orchard. An open common is of 
little use to anybody ; but a fenced farm, owned 
and cultivated, helps to feed the entire commu- 
nity. Wheat growing on the plains and cattle 
roaming at large, owned by no one, will not be 
left alone long enough to ripen or mature. The 
first comer will help himself. Men have no heart 
to make things, or find things, or grow things, if 
after they are made, or found, or grown, they be- 
long to nobody or anybody. 

The world's industry would stop in an hour; 
steel ships would no longer be built; factories 
and mills would shut down ; mines of silver and 
gold, coal and iron, would lie idle ; farms would 



154 



THE TEN LAWS. 



grow up to weeds ; wild lands would not be re- 
claimed ; inventions would cease ; no books would 
be written, nor pictures painted, nor statues 
carved ; no houses or cities would be built or rail- 
ways constructed ; none of the wonderful works 
of civilization would go on, — if men did not feel 
a reasonable certainty that each one would have 
the right to own and control the things made with 
his hands, or found out by his wits. The race 
would sink back into barbarism. 

But, again, he who breaks this eighth law lowers 
the standard of manhood. When production is 
arrested, the producer is weakened. 

Man grows strong and noble by toil in getting 
things and by care in using things. The charac- 
ter of each man shows itself not merely in his 
way of earning money, but in his way of spending 
money. Holding property makes or unmakes the 
man. It is a high test. It may truly be said 
that God's first great gospel to man is contained 
in this sentence, not a curse but a blessing, " In 
the sweat of thy brow shalt thou eat bread." To 
eat it in the sweat of another man's brow is loss 
and degradation. To earn for one's self is noble ; 
to have another earn for one's self is ignoble. 
He who takes the short cut of stealing misses the 
discipline of life. Possession is responsibility. 
Owning things educates. Coming into power 
steadies and sobers men. Prince Henry was a 



THE EIGHTH LAW. 



155 



wild and dissolute young man, but King Henry 
was a sober and sagacious monarch* 

This feeling of ownership comes into life very 
early. Babies begin to have it before they can 
talk plain. They say " mine," and show by very 
unmistakable signs that they mean " mine/' and 
are prepared to defend with small eager hands 
the rights they claim. The sentiment, like all 
others, may be perverted till it is vile and selfish 
but in natural and due measure it is needed and 
wholesome. It is the fulcrum upon which every 
lever lifting humanity must move. It is not an 
ignoble motive : without it man would fail to 
reach his highest and best, and would never be- 
come the fine, free, capable, intelligent creature 
he was intended to become. There is untold 
blessing in work; it cheers and inspires. Man 
was made to work. His muscles are strong for 
work and grow stronger. His eyes are quick to 
see, his ears to hear, and his hands to handle, in 
order that he may be a working and not an idle 
being. The Son of God said, " My Father work- 
eth hitherto and I work." Paul thought it worth 
while to write to even spiritual Christians : " Let 
him that stole, steal no more : but rather let him 
labor, working with his hands N the thing that is 
good, that he may have whereof to give to him 
that hath need." 

Work is good for the body. By it the channels 



156 



THE TEN LAWS. 



of life are kept free and clear, the blood is puri- 
fied, the muscles developed, the vital organs 
aided, the whole system toned up, made strong 
and well. Work is good for the mind. It makes 
man think and plan and use his wits. None are 
so miserable in mind as the idle. They are a 
trial to themselves. Time hangs heavy on their 
hands. They hurry from place to place seeking 
recreation. The sleep of the laboring man is 
sound and his food tastes sweet. He, therefore, 
who takes the short cut of stealing and wishes to 
get things without labor is an enemy to himself 
and to his fellow-creatures. He wishes to banish 
God's blessing from the earth. He would dwarf 
humanity to the tramp's proportions. 

Several practical questions arise. First, does 
want justify stealing ? Was Jean Valjean doing 
only what he had a right to do when because his 
sister's children were hungry and starving, he 
thrust his arm through the window-glass and 
took the baker's loaf ? We all shrink from say- 
ing that a man is guilty of theft who seeks only 
to keep life in his body ; and yet are there not 
things better than life and things that a man 
would sooner keep than life ? Is not honor better 
than life ? Perhaps it will help us if the question 
is turned and put the other way, — Would not 
Jean Yaljean have been a nobler, finer man if 
he had said, " I can starve ; I can let those 
children starve ; but I cannot steal " ? 



THE EIGHTH LAW. 



157 



Then it should always be remembered that 
poverty is relative. I am poorer than my neigh- 
bor in the mansion, but I am richer than my 
neighbor in the hovel. There are gradations. 
Wealth is a sliding scale. Where shall we draw 
the line and say that on one side men may steal, 
and on the other they may not steal ? How poor 
must a man be in order to have the right of steal- 
ing ? On what level does the rule cease to work ? 
If the hungry tramp may steal from the laboring 
man, why may not the laboring man steal from 
the wealthy capitalist ? I am unable to see how 
we can draw the line anywhere, or how we can 
fail to fall back on the broad, simple principle 
that this law was made for everybody, and that 
no man is under any circumstances to take what 
is not his own. 

Property in this world is very unevenly divided. 
Some have much, and some have none. Lazarus 
still comes to Dives' door, but Lazarus must not 
steal from Dives. If Lazarus were put into 
Dives' house he would probably soon grow poor, 
and Dives, thrust out into the street with the 
dogs, would in a little while get back his wealth. 
Some men are born to be poor, and poor they will 
be. Some men are born to be rich, and rich they 
will be; but poverty does not justify stealing, 
neither does wealth. "Render unto Caesar the 
things that are Caesar's." Do not steal from the 



158 



THE TEN LAWS. 



king. The poor clerk pilfering pennies from his 
employer's drawer and the cunning politician 
plundering thousands from the national treasury 
are alike guilty of stealing. 

Again, does the method of taking alter the 
guilt of taking ? The Spartans used to teach 
their boys that it was right to steal, but wrong 
to get found out. This seems to be the principle 
by which many are governed in modern times. 
The burglar who breaks open a bank safe, or 
gets into your house at night and carries off the 
plate, or knocks a man down in the street and 
takes his money, is guilty of robbery; but is he 
any more guilty of robbery than the bank presi- 
dent who skilfully falsifies accounts, or the ex- 
ecutor who secretly squanders an estate, or the 
trustee who artfully misapplies funds ? Are not 
contractors who build worthless walls, and rail- 
way directors who water stock, and dealers who 
give light weight or a spurious article, as well 
as customers who never expect to pay, or who lie 
about the price of the same goods offered in 
another store, — are not all guilty of stealing ? 
Is not trickery and sharp practice either before 
or behind the counter robbery in the sight of 
God? 

Does not the domestic servant who wastes her 
time or pilfers from the family supplies take 
that which is not her own? Must we not say 



THE EIGHTH LAW. * 159 

that the day-laborer who drops his tools the 
moment he is unobserved is guilty of violating 
the eighth commandment? There can be but 
one answer to this question. The method of 
stealing does not signify. Guilt lies in the tak- 
ing and not in the manner of taking* All the 
worldly cunning and craft, all the tricks and 
traps and sly evasions, the equivocal promises, 
artful dodges, and smooth dissimulations upon 
which men sometimes so pride themselves, as 
showing exceeding cleverness, will at last come 
home to them in the honest hour as violations of 
the old law which says, " Thou shalt not steal." 

Again, we sometimes hear it asked, " Does not 
the world owe a man his living, and can it be a 
crime to take that which is his own ? " The 
question is a very plausible one. Men come into 
this world not of their own will and choice. 
They are not consulted beforehand. When they 
are here, it is necessary to stay. Something is 
needed to keep them while they stay, and it would 
therefore seem right and reasonable to say that 
the world owes every man his living. 

I will not now insist upon the fact that this is 
the question of tramps, beggars, and vagrants. 
Although the question seems to be a perfectly 
fair and reasonable one, it is, I believe, neither 
fair nor reasonable, and contains a hurtful fallacy. 
Many things come into the world that fail to get 



160 



THE TEN LAWS. 



a living and are not able to stay. The waste of 
life is enormous. Only the strongest survive. 
Science tells us that their survival is the survival 
of the fittest. Each man must show cause why 
he deserves to survive. 

It is therefore a fallacy to say that the world 
owes every man his living ; but it is a truth to 
say that the world owes every man a fair chance 
to earn his living. The rewards come sure and 
soon to good and faithful servants. He who has 
shall have more abundantly. Payment is made 
for service rendered. The earth yields nothing 
to the idle and lazy farmer, but brings forth 
richly and lavishly for the industrious and ca- 
pable farmer. In the sweat of thy brow shalt 
thou eat bread. He who seeks to live on the 
labor of his own diligent hands will live and 
live well ; but he who seeks to live on the labor 
of other hands, and to get what is not his own, 
will find that the world owes no man a living 
till he has earned it. 

The truth is that every man owes himself a 
living ; a good, hearty, generous living ; a living 
for body and soul ; for mind, spirit, will, and 
heart; a living for the whole man. He owes 
himself all that makes life sweet and pleasant. 
Thus much he has a right to own and control. 
It is an inborn and imperishable right. The 
eighth law guarantees this right, lifts and hal- 



THE EIGHTH LAW. 



161 



lows life, makes it dear and wholesome, worth 
living as a trust from God, sacred and a means 
of grace, so that, like Jacob, every man finds the 
earth beneath, and the sky overhead, changing 
into the house of God and the gate of heaven. 



11 



XL 



XI. 



THE NINTH LAW. 



Thou shalt not bear false witness against thy neighbor. 



VEE Y man born into the world has a right 



I j to rank where he belongs, and to be known 
for what he is worth. Most men in the long run 
do become known for what they are worth, and 
rank where they belong. They find their true 
level. Cromwell said, " Paint me as I am." It 
is only fair that men should be painted as they 
are, and known for what they are worth. It is 
not fair that they should be painted better than 
they are, and known for more than their worth, 
nor that they should be painted worse than they 
are, and known for less than their worth. 

Paul writes to the Romans thus : " For I say, 
through the grace that was given me, to every 
man that is among you, not to think of him- 
self more highly than he ought to think ; but 
so to think as to think soberly, according as 
God hath dealt to each man a measure of faith." 
Men are equal in rights, but they are not equal in 



Exodus xx. 16. 




160 



THE TEN LAWS. 



mights. Each man must frankly consent to be 

himself, and to be taken for himself and as him- 
self. While he is not to think more highly of 
himself than he ought to think, neither is he 
to think less highly of himself than he ought to 
think. No man is to despise the gift that is in 
him. No man is to cheapen himself, or put a 
low and false value upon any mental or moral 
powers, — any gifts, graces, or talents he may 
possess. 

Because man has a right to be known for what 
he is worth, and to rank where he belongs, the 
ninth law says, " Thou shalt not bear false wit- 
ness against thy neighbor. 57 To bear false witness 
against a neighbor is to rank him where he does 
not belong, to value him below or aside from his 
real worth, and thus to rob him of a portion of 
that weight and importance which he ought to 
have among his fellow-men. It is a crime to re- 
move landmarks, or to meddle in any way with 
a neighbor's property; but it is a more serious 
crime to remove moral landmarks, or to meddle 
in any way with a neighbor's good name, char- 
acter, or reputation. Such a hurt is "past all 
surgery." 

Even little children feel the need of knowing 
men as they are. They have their own special 
ways of sizing men up, and getting at their true 
measure. It is no light test to meet the search- 



THE MNTH LAW. 



167 



ing eyes of a small, timid, curious child, looking 
a man over, and making up its mite of a mind 
whether or no it is safe and best to trust that 
man. Every child wants to know the truth 
about men, the whole truth, and nothing but the 
truth. Children need to know the truth in order 
to keep out of harm's way. 

It is, however, no easy task to measure men 
correctly, or to value them at their real worth. 
We can, by taking pains, tell exactly how tall a 
man is in feet and inches, and how much he 
weighs in pounds and ounces 5 but are there any 
methods by which we can gauge character, find 
out mental weight, and get the size of courage, 
fidelity, faith, hope, generosity, honor, love ? 

We see at once, therefore, that there are two 
kinds of false witness, — first, that which is merely 
by chance, and, second, that which is of choice. 
He who says the false tod bad thing about his 
neighbor because he does not take needed time 
and pains to find out and say the true thing, is 
guilty of bearing false witness. Those careless, 
ignorant, witless people, who go talking up and 
down the world, tossing words right and left, 
dealing judgments here and there, now and then, 
know not what they do. They are like children 
playing with edge-tools. They are like gamblers 
casting dice. They neither know nor think any- 
thing about the deathless power and long vital- 



168 



THE TEN LAWS. 



ity of words ; and how they slumber on for 
months or years, and then wake to work harm 
and mischief in the world long after the man 
who spoke them is gone. 

The arrow fired at a venture may do more 
harm in the world than a shaft deliberately 
aimed, and the word spoken at random may 
prove more deadly and fly through the earth on 
a more hateful mission than one used with 
wicked and wilful purpose. Because it is not 
easy to see and to say the true thing about 
neighbors, and because words carelessly spoken 
by a fool may do as much damage in the world 
as words wickedly spoken by a knave, Jesus 
said : " Judge not, that ye be not judged. For 
with what judgment ye judge, ye shall be judged : 
and with what measure ye mete, it shall be meas- 
ured unto you." It is better not to judge at all 
than to judge recklessly, and men are to judge 
only when they must. Idle words are deadly 
missiles. They are moral bacteria. Jesus says 
again : " Every idle word that men shall speak, 
they shall give account thereof in the day of judg- 
ment. For by thy words thou shalt be justified, 
and by thy words thou shalt be condemned." 

Hence we learn that man needs three things 
in himself not to be guilty of unintended false 
witness against his neighbor. He needs, first, 
self-control. There is divine force in silence. 



THE NINTH LAW. 



169 



He who cannot speak well need not usually 
speak ill, and would be wise generally not 
to speak at all. Be swift to hear and slow 
to speak. Golden silence is better than silver 
speech. Even the truth is not to be spoken at 
all times, and how much less that which may or 
may not be true. Great caution is needed, and 
he who does not speak at all against his neighbor 
will certainly not be guilty of false witness. In 
the fifteenth psalm we learn that one of the 
qualities found in the man who is to dwell with 
God in his holy hill is that he "slandereth not 
with his tongue, nor doeth evil to his friend, nor 
taketh up a reproach against his neighbor. " 

Self-control is always noble, but is especially 
so when exercised for others. It is not a virtue 
to speak whatever comes into the mind. Many 
things are crude and cruel, and are to be held 
back. True strength is found in the man who 
can restrain his tongue. There is power in 
reserve. He who gives free vent to the thoughts 
of his heart will lose control over himself. At 
last he can keep nothing to himself. The Psalm- 
ist saw that he must restrain himself: "I was 
dumb with silence, I held my peace, even from 
good ; and my sorrow was stirred." Eepression 
is always painful. He said again : " I will take 
heed to my ways, that I sin not with my 
tongue: I will keep my mouth with a bridle, 



170 



THE TEN LAWS. 



while the wicked is before me." Hence we say 
that in order to avoid the guilt of heedless false 
witness against our neighbors, we must have self- 
controL 

Second, we must also have sympathy. Sym- 
pathy is the key that unlocks every human heart. 
He who is without sympathy cannot speak the 
truth of his neighbor, for he cannot even know 
the truth. To know him we must love him. 
Love is the only being in the universe who can- 
not be blinded. Instead of saying that love 
is blind, we should say that love only can see. 
" Nothing but love can read the letters, nothing 
but sympathy catch the sound ; there is no pure 
passion that can be understood except by pure- 
ness of heart; the foul or blunt feeling will 
see itself in everything and set down blas- 
phemies; it will see Beelzebub in the casting 
out of devils ; it will find its god of flies in every 
alabaster box of precious ointment. . . . But 
sympathy and love will find its own image every- 
where, will see good in everything. It will lie 
lovingly over all the faults .and rough places 
of the human heart, as the snow from heaven 
does, over the hard and black and broken moun- 
tain rocks, following their forms truly, and yet 
catching light for them to make them fair, so 
that must be a steep and unkindly crag indeed 
which it cannot cover." 



THE NINTH LAW. 



171 



When, therefore, each man has learned to put 
himself in his neighbor's place, and to see things as 
he sees them, there will be far less danger of this 
chance, random, haphazard false witness which 
does so much harm in the world. He will not then 
behold the mote that is in his brother's eye, but will 
consider the beam that is in his own eye. He will 
not say, " Let me cast the mote out of thine eye," 
but will begin first to cast the beam out of his own 
eye. The law of sympathy with our fellow-man 
will suppress false witness against him. 

We shall need, however, not only self-control 
and sympathy, but we shall need the greatest of 
all graces, — charity. Peter tells us that charity 
shall hide a multitude of sins. Certainly then it 
will hinder a man from imputing sins where 
they do not exist. 

Paul tells us that love is the fulfilling of the 
law. He who loves will keep not only this ninth 
law, but he will keep all the ten laws. If a man 
love God he will have no other gods, nor take his 
name in vain, nor fail to remember the Sabbath 
day to keep it holy ; and if he love his neighbor, 
he will honor father and mother, he will neither 
kill, nor steal, nor bear false witness against his 
neighbor. 

How can we leave out the finest words ever 
spoken on this subject ? I mean what Paul said 
to the Corinthians : " Love suffereth long, and is 



172 



THE TEN LAWS. 



kind ; love envieth not ; love vaunteth not itself, 
is not puffed up, doth not behave itself unseemly, 
seeketh not its own, is not provoked, taketh not 
account of evil ; rejoiceth not in unrighteousness, 
but rejoiceth with the truth ; beareth all things^ 
believeth all things^ hopeth all things^ endureth 
all things." Yes ; love, and love only, is the ful- 
filling of the law ; love, and love only, will shut 
the lips against every word of false witness which 
can proceed from them against our neighbor. 

Great qualities, then, are needed in order that 
we may truly keep this law, which says, " Thou 
shalt not bear false witness against thy neighbor." 
We must know that neighbor, and sympathize 
with him, and love him, and suppress in ourselves 
every evil instinct which is prone to rise up 
against him. 

We turn now to the other side> and consider 
that kind of false witness which is from choice. 
It is of course understood that this ninth law 
does not prohibit merely the crime of perjury. 
It does say that a man shall not bear false wit- 
ness against his neighbor in a court of justice 
when he is under oath to speak the truth ; but it 
also goes further and provides that a man shall 
not, at any time or in any place, say the thing 
which is not true of his neighbor. On the other 
hand, we are not so to extend this law that it 
shall include all forms of lying. The Decalogue 



THE NINTH LAW. 



173 



is often treated as though it was a complete code 
of morals, and its provisions are stretched till 
they cover every known sin. Law, however, is 
always to be interpreted strictly, and is never to 
be made either larger or smaller than it is. It is 
neither to be added to nor taken from. Either 
method weakens and dishonors the law. It is to 
be literally construed. As the seventh law does 
not forbid every kind of sensual sin which men 
can commit, but merely one kind of sensual sin, 
so the ninth law does not forbid every possible 
form of lying, but only that one form of lying 
which is mentioned, — that is, bearing false wit- 
ness against neighbors. 

He who says the false and bad thing about his 
neighbor, knowing that it is false and bad, mean- 
ing to say it, and meaning to harm and hurt his 
neighbor, is guilty of a deeper and more hateful 
kind of false witness than one who speaks in the 
same way thoughtlessly and carelessly. It is, no 
doubt, a crime to be thoughtless and careless in 
talking about our fellow-creatures 5 but it is a 
greater crime to be malicious in talking about 
them. In every deep there is a lower deep. Of 
such a man we need not fear to say, u It were 
well for him if a millstone were hanged about 
his neck and he were thrown into the sea, rather 
than that he should cause one of these little ones 
to stumble." 



174 



THE TEN LAWS. 



He who bears false witness against his neighbor, 
commits a crime against himself. It is, on the 
whole, a more serious thing to traduce than to be 
traduced, and it is better to be evil spoken of 
than it is to speak evil of others. One of the 
beatitudes tells us that there is sometimes a 
blessing for those who suffer reproach : " Blessed 
are ye when men shall reproach you, and perse- 
cute you, and say all manner of evil against you 
falsely, for my sake. Eejoice, and be exceeding 
glad ; for great is your reward in heaven : for so 
persecuted they the prophets which were before 
you." But though there may be a blessing for 
those who are falsely accused, there can never be 
a blessing for those who falsely accuse. 

Lying, of any kind, is often called the meanest 
of sins. It is always cowardly. While we must 
remember that young children are sometimes 
untruthful before conscience awakes, and a false- 
hood with them has no character at all one way 
or the other, and is neither good nor evil, yet so 
soon as a lie is known for a lie, it darkens and 
perverts the whole nature. Lying destroys char- 
acter, and lying about other people is one of the 
worst forms of lying and destroys character 
soonest. " A man may steal, and he will always 
know that stealing is wrong ; or he may get 
drunk, and he will always know that drunkenness 
is wicked and debasing ; but the habit of lying is 



THE NINTH LAW. 



175 



so subtle and pernicious an evil that it brings one 
into a state in which, one does not know and feel 
it to be wrong, and at last into such a condition 
that one cannot tell the difference between the 
truth and a lie." 

He who sins against the truth, dies to the 
truth, and at last cannot know the truth, or 
receive the truth, nor even believe that there is 
truth. He is like a man who makes a valuable 
collection of fine pictures, and then puts out his 
eyes, or who studies music for many years and 
then destroys his hearing. Bearing false witness 
sets a man against every other man and bars one 
out from human society. The mind grows dark 
and the heart gets hard. One of the greatest 
thinkers who ever lived in the world — Immanuel 
Kant — considered falsehood a loss of all personal 
worth and a destruction of all personal integrity. 
It may well be called the dry rot of the soul. It 
is a rust and canker that eats out the heart of 
goodness. It makes man a villain. 

The apostle James calls our attention to the 
deadly effect of this sin upon the man who com- 
mits it. It spoils every virtue and blights the 
whole nature. The tongue is a world of iniquity 
among our members which defileth the whole 
body. It strikes back and saps moral manhood. 
The worst term which can be applied to any 
man is the term "liar." Eo man who bears 



176 



THE TEN LAWS. 



false witness can hurt others so much as he hurts 
himself. He is at war with himself, and the 
very efforts which he makes to rise only sink 
him lower in shame and vice. 

The crime is unnatural and monstrous. The 
light itself becomes darkness. James puts it 
all into these words : " Therewith bless we the 
Lord and Father; and therewith curse we men, 
which are made after the likeness of God: out 
of the same mouth cometh forth blessing and 
cursing." Such things ought not to be, and, 
indeed, cannot be except where the whole body 
is defiled. " Doth the fountain send forth from 
the same opening sweet water and bitter ? Can 
a fig-tree yield olives, or a vine figs? Neither 
can salt water yield sweet." He, therefore, who 
suffers himself to bear false witness against his 
neighbor, commits a crime against himself, and 
harms himself far more than he can harm others, 
or be harmed by others. " The good man out of his 
good treasure bringeth forth good things ; and the 
evil man out of his evil treasure bringeth forth evil 
things." False witness comes from false men. 

It should be remarked, perhaps, in passing that 
slander may spring from envy or jealousy or 
hatred or from any of the baser and meaner 
feelings which creep into the human heart ; and 
again, on the other hand, it may have no personal 
ill-will or venom in it, and may be only a treach- 



THE NINTH LAW. 



177 



erous way of dealing with rivals, and getting the 
upper hand of them. When a business man 
abuses his neighbor in the same trade and lies 
about his wares or goods ; or when a politician 
traduces the opposing candidate; or when a 
clergyman rails at other clergymen; or a doctor 
calls other doctors hard names ; or a lawyer speaks 
contemptuously of another lawyer's ability, — we 
are not to suppose always that they hate one 
another and bear ill-will, but merely that they 
wish to defeat one another and get a business 
or professional advantage. False witness in 
these instances is used only as a concealed 
weapon to stab an antagonist. 

He who bears false witness against his neigh- 
bor commits a crime against society and against 
humanity. Every man is linked to every other 
man, and by just so much as we lower single men, 
take from them their real worth, and rank them 
where they do not belong, we lower society and 
rob humanity of a portion of that virtue and 
honor which belongs to the race. When the 
water supply of a town or city is corrupted, no 
one can tell where the evil will stop, or into how 
many homes sickness and death may enter before 
its force is spent. A man who should put 
typhoid-fever germs into the town reservoir 
would be deemed a wretch deserving no mercy ; 
but he who puts false witness against his neigh- 

12 



178 



THE TEN LAWS. 



bor into circulation and gives it currency among 
his fellow-men denies not the sources of physical 
life, but the sources of moral and spiritual life. 
He makes it harder for every true man to be 
true, and every pure man to be pure. He helps 
evil men to be evil and sets on fire the course of 
nature. 

ISTo one can tell where the moral evil will stop, 
or into how many homes the corroding influence 
may enter before its fatal force is spent. Evil 
communications corrupt good manners, and a little 
leaven leaveneth the whole lump. It is vain to say 
that false witness has no power. Every scandal 
has its day, and for that day is mighty. It is 
hard to stand before calumny. 

When a fire is started in the heart of a great 
city, it burns with resistless fury until all within 
reach has been consumed, and it must be fought 
with desperate heroism before it can be arrested. 
When a social fire is kindled by some false and 
foul word which ignites human hearts like a 
spark, it also rages in the community and affects 
the whole tone of society. Behold, how a great 
forest is kindled by how small a fire! Slander 
smoulders on and bursts out afresh when least 
suspected. You can refute the slander and track 
it back to the source from which it came, but you 
cannot undo the evil it has wrought nor measure 
that which it may yet do in the world. 



THE NINTH LAW. 



179 



Eobertson says : " It is like the Greek fire used 
in ancient warfare which burnt unquenched be- 
neath the water ; or like the weeds which, when 
you have extirpated them in one place, are sprout- 
ing forth vigorously in another spot at a distance 
of many hundred yards ; or, to use the metaphor 
of St. James himself, it is like the wheel which 
catches fire as it goes, and burns with a fiercer 
conflagration as its own speed increases; it sets 
on fire the whole course of nature." 

It is a restless evil full of deadly poison, and 
is set on fire of hell. Slander is devilish, and 
those who bear false witness against their neigh- 
bors have the spirit of the Evil One and are of 
their father the Devil. 

Two practical questions remain : first, when 
is it right to unmask evil and bear witness 
against wrong-doers for the sake of others who 
may be harmed ? Notice that the commandment 
does not forbid this in any case. Perhaps the 
spirit of the law would enjoin caution and teach 
us that we are never to take up a reproach 
against any man except for good cause and to 
save innocent persons from injury. No man can 
doubt that it is his duty and every man's duty to 
strip ravenous wolves of their sheep's clothing, 
and to tear away disguises from all evil-doers. 
Yet even in the discharge of this duty considera- 
tion is to be shown, and no man is to be unjustly 



180 



THE TEN LAWS. 



or hastily condemned. J udge nothing before its 
time. 

Second, who is the neighbor against whom we 
are not to bear false witness ? There is but one 
immortal answer. The Samaritan is your neigh- 
bor ; the man who hates you, or whom you have 
hated, and who fights against you, and seeks to 
undo you, he is your neighbor ; the man on the 
other side of the globe, and the man who lives in 
the house next your own, is your neighbor. He 
who loved the law and kept the law, and came 
not to destroy the law but to fulfil the law, 
said: "Love your enemies, and pray for them 
that persecute you; that ye may be sons of 
your Father which is in heaven : for he maketh 
his sun to rise on the evil and the good, and 
sendeth rain on the just and the unjust." 



XII. 

€f)e €entf> Eato. 



XII. 



THE TENTH LAW. 



Thou shalt not covet thy neighbor's house, thou shalt not 
covet thy neighbor's wife, nor his manservant, nor his maid- 
servant, nor his ox, nor his ass, nor anything that is thy 
neighbor's. — Exodus xx. 17. 

'T^HE greatest misfortune which can befall a 



X man in this world is neither loss of estate 
nor sickness of body, but it is degradation or dis- 
order of mind. We are taught to pray for those 
who are " afflicted or distressed in mind, body, or 
estate," but the heaviest affliction or distress is 
mental. Hurt of mind is more serious than hurt 
of body. The saddest fate which can overtake 
one in the flesh is that of shattered reason. 
" Like sweet bells jangled, out of tune and harsh." 
The estate is not the man. The body is not the 
man. The soul or the intelligent spirit is the 
man. To touch the spirit is to touch man in his 
most vital, vulnerable part. 

It was a misfortune to Job that his property 
was stolen ; that his sons and daughters perished ; 
that his body was smitten with a loathsome dis- 




184 



THE TEN LAWS. 



ease ; but it would have been a more terrible mis- 
fortune if his mind had been smitten with 
distrust and hatred. Because a depraved mind, 
a jealous, envious spirit, is the last and worst 
misery which can befall mortal man on earth, the 
tenth law says, " Thou shalt not covet. " 

Envy is a mental disease. It works like a 
malignant fever, not in the tissues of the body, 
but in the thoughts and imaginations of the 
heart ; it inflames and irritates the whole nature. 
Like other diseases, it may be avoided or it may 
be invited. As we invite bodily sickness by 
needless and improper exposure, so we invite 
spiritual sickness by needless and improper ex- 
posure. He who suffers himself to brood over 
his own unhappy lot and to contrast it with that 
of more fortunate people, is opening the way for 
envy, jealousy, and other moral maladies to fasten 
themselves upon his spirit. 

Several remarks are needed here. It is to be 
noticed, first, that generous emulation is not 
envy. Men may seek to surpass one another. 
No man is condemned for wishing to better his 
condition. Healthy rivalry spurs human pro- 
gress. One good work stirs up another. The 
tenth law does not forbid your building, if able, a 
better house than your neighbor, or keeping a 
finer lawn, or driving a faster horse, but only 
your wishing to take away from your neighbor 



THE TENTH LAW. 



185 



his house, or his horse, or his lawn. Tt says not 
merely that you shall not take your neighbor's 
house, but that you shall not even desire to take 
his house, and shall not covet anything that is 
thy neighbor's. The desire to take is a com- 
munist's desire. It is a tramp's doctrine. There 
is, however, nothing at all in this law to hinder a 
man from doing his very best, and from striving 
in all lawful and fair ways to outstrip his 
brother. 

It is to be said also of envy that while most 
sins give some pleasure to those who commit 
them, this one gives no pleasure and only makes 
man miserable. Envy hath torment, and nothing 
but torment. Sin is always bitter at last, though 
often sweet at first. Intemperance begins with 
fine delirium. The glutton takes delight over his 
table, and the sluggard in his bed. The miser 
pays a fearful price, and parts with what most 
nien prize, but he has a reward: in loneliness 
and rags he can (Jount up his gains, gloat over his 
securities, and handle the gold which is so beau- 
tiful in his eyes. An angry man finds relief in 
bursts of passion, and the vain man is happy in 
fancied superiority. All these sins have pleas- 
ures which last for a season, but envy brings no 
pleasure and gives no joy to its victim. It pun- 
ishes him even in the act 6f indulgence. His 
pleasure is pain. Envy, like a viper, stings the 



186 



THE TEN LAWS. 



breast that warms it into life. The sight of 
prosperity is only irritation and uneasiness. 

We are to notice again that envy always moves 
in narrow personal lines. It is small, calculating, 
and pinches the heart in which it lurks. Hazlitt 
says : " The player envies only the player, the 
poet envies only the poet, because each confines 
his idea of excellence to his own profession or 
pursuit, and thinks if he could but remove some 
one particular competitor out of the way, he 
should have a clear stage to himself and be a 
1 Phoenix gazed by all ; ^ as if though we crushed 
one rival, another would not start up ; or as if 
there were not a thousand other claims, a thou- 
sand other modes of excellence and praiseworthy 
acquirements, to divide the palm and defeat his 
idle pretension to the sole and unqualified admi- 
ration of mankind." 

It may not always be true — as this writer 
says — that men see merit only in the modes of 
their own excellence, but it is so often true that 
it serves as a working rule. The shoemaker is 
most apt to envy a more successful shoemaker ; 
the lawyer is most apt to envy a more successful 
lawyer ; a clergyman is most apt to envy a more 
successful clergyman. A great general is not so 
likely to crave the laurels of an illustrious poet 
as he is the honors of a rival commander. Men 
measure themselves with their own kind, com- 



THE TENTH LAW. 



187 



pare themselves with their own craft, and envy 
other members of their own guild. The race 
also divides up into larger masses, and then the 
poor envy the rich, the uneducated envy the 
educated, the sick envy the well, and, in a word, 
the unfortunates envy the fortunates. 

It may be worth while to say of envy that it 
does not as a rule long for the impossible ; only 
babies cry for the moon. In this land nothing 
perhaps seems impossible. The canal-driver may 
be President. There are, no doubt, envious day 
dreams ; but in actual life covetousness works at 
shorter range, and in closer quarters. The spar- 
row does not envy the eagle, but only the sparrow 
a little stronger and bolder than itself. The 
beggar does not envy the king, but only the 
beggar a little more fortunate than himself. The 
brakeman on a railway train does not really envy 
Vanderbilt, but only the conductor or division 
superintendent. 

Chiefly, however, it is to be said that envy fosters 
evil. It is a deadly upas shade under which vile 
things gather. It leads to ill-will, malice, detrac- 
tion, uncharitableness, venom, and bitterness. It 
is said to have an "evil eye." Lift up a flat 
stone which has long been lying on the ground, 
and see what crawling, loathsome creatures run 
hurrying and wriggling in every direction, away 
from the light and good air. Envy shelters evil. 



188 



THE TEN LAWS. 



Beneath its dark shade vile things lurk and flour- 
ish. Envy is almost always unjust. Envy dis- 
torts. It seeks to soil the purity it cannot match, 
and to detract from the excellence which it has 
not attained. Envy hates. Envy and anger are 
associated in ancient writings on ethics. 

Make a list of all that love does, and you will 
have a list of all that envy does not. It is the 
reverse of love. " Love suffereth long, and is 
kind ; love envieth not ; love vaunteth not itself, 
is not puffed up, doth not behave itself unseemly, 
seeketh not its own, is not provoked, taketh not 
account of evil; rejoiceth not in unrighteous- 
ness, but rejoiceth with the truth; beareth all 
things, believeth all things, hopeth all things, en- 
dureth all things." In order to read this pas- 
sage as a description of envy, you have only in 
mathematical language to change all the signs 
on both sides. Plus becomes minus, and minus 
becomes plus. Sweet becomes bitter, and bitter 
sweet ; light becomes darkness, and darkness 
light. Envy does not suffer long, and is unkind ; 
it vaunts itself, and is puffed up and behaves 
unseemly and seeks what is not its own ; is eas- 
ily provoked and takes account of evil ; it re- 
joices in unrighteousness and not with the truth ; 
it bears nothing, believes nothing, hopes nothing, 
and endures nothing. 

We have seen that the greatest misfortune 



THE TENTH LAW. 



189 



which can befall man is not loss of property or 
sickness of body, but dishonor and degradation 
of mind ; and that envy is such a dishonor and 
degradation ; that it is a mental malady or sick- 
ness of the soul. 

It is now to be observed as self-evident that 
hardly anything has more to do with man's out- 
ward world, with shaping his life and giving to it 
character and quality, than his inward world or 
life. Feelings and sentiments make or mar the 
man. "As a man thinketh, so is he." 

Whatever is in the heart tends constantly to ex- 
press itself in the life. Out of the heart, the mouth 
speaketh. If love is in the heart, it strives to come 
forth in words and deeds, showing itself in a thou- 
sand ways, from giving a cup of cold water to lay- 
ing down life itself. If envy is in the heart, it also 
strives to come forth in words and deeds, show- 
ing itself in a thousand ways, from withholding a 
cup of cold water to keeping back life itself. As 
love is an inward brightness of the soul, so envy 
is an inward darkness or eclipse of the soul. It 
is a creeping paralysis. It is an inward moral 
mortification which spreads and spreads more 
and more, reaching and benumbing faculty after 
faculty and feeling after feeling, till conscience is 
dulled, all the finer moral powers blunted, and the 
whole man corrupted. 

Envy spreads, first, through the mind. It dark- 



190 



THE TEN LAWS. 



ens and perverts the mind. It attacks the power 
of thought and hampers it and limits it and twists 
it so that clear, correct thinking is impossible. 
The man who envies his neighbor's house or 
land or position or business or trade or practice 
is for that very reason incapable of thinking 
truly about his neighbor. His mind is in the 
position of a judge who has received a bribe. 
That bribe acts on the deliberation of the judge 
as a loadstone drawing his thought away from 
the true, blinding his mind to justice, and wholly 
unfitting him to give a decision. 

" The lamp of the body is the eye : if there- 
fore thine eye be single, thy whole body shall be 
full of light. But if thine eye be evil, thy whole 
body shall be full of darkness. If therefore 
the light that is in thee be darkness, how great 
is the darkness/' Envy is the " evil eye" that 
darkens the whole mind. It is not merely that 
the envious man is unwilling to give his neighbors 
their due, and to think of them fairly and im- 
partially, but that he is incapable of candor 
and justice. He is full of mental reservations, 
logical quirks and turns, dissimulations, special 
pleading and pettifogging. 

A false premise vitiates every conclusion. 
He who starts out wrong will never come right 
until he changes his course. Envy is a twist 
in the mind ; it is a cast in the eye ; it is a crook 



THE TENTH LAW. 



191 



in the limb; it is a kink in the thought, and 
leads to immoralities of mind, to jesuitical clever- 
ness in equivocation, to shirking the truth, to 
hiding real opinions, to slipping out of moral 
back doors, to deception, and to all the arts and 
wiles of diplomacy. 

Again, envy reaches out through thought 
into conduct. An envious man is, first, envious 
in his thought, and then he is envious in his 
action. " Out of the abundance of the heart the 
mouth speaketh. The good man out of the good 
treasure of his heart bringeth forth good things : 
and the evil man out of the evil treasure of his 
heart bringeth forth evil things." Can a spirit 
of covetousness bring forth good things ? It 
flings its own dark, baneful shadow over nature 
and over man. It tarnishes whatever it touches. 
It sees itself everywhere, and finds only vileness. 
It is blind to the glory and beauty of nature, 
the freedom and gladness of living things. 
Neither sea nor sky seems lovely or grand to 
one who is " green with envy." 

Man is like a transparency. All his meaning, 
whether it be good or bad, comes out in legible 
signs and characters when a lamp is placed 
within. The dark sentences written upon the 
walls of his mind become luminous and are read 
by everybody. That which has been whispered 
in the ear is shouted on the housetop. No man 



192 



THE TEN LAWS. 



can keep his secret. Nature is in league against 
him. The trees whisper and the winds sigh. 
Every ray of light is inquisitive. Evil must 
come out. It is the nature of mind to express 
itself in action. 

" For from within, out of the heart of men, 
evil thoughts proceed, fornications, thefts, mur- 
ders, adulteries, coveting, wickednesses, deceit, 
lasciviousness, an evil eye, railing, pride, foolish- 
ness; all these evil things proceed from within, 
and defile the man." A single nettle is enough to 
stock the world. David coveted his neighbor's 
wife, and this single covetous thought led him on 
from step to step until he had dishonored him- 
self, done the meanest and most disreputable 
deeds, ending with murder, under aggravated 
circumstances. Judas carried the bag and began 
to covet its contents, and from this covetous 
beginning was led on until he had betrayed the 
Son of Man with a kiss. Achan saw among the 
spoils of war a goodly Babylonish garment, 
two hundred shekels of silver, and a wedge of 
gold; and he coveted them, and from this begin- 
ning was led on until he had taken them and 
concealed them, and brought defeat and ruin 
upon the whole Jewish camp. We never can 
tell where an envious thought will lead or when 
it will end. 

It is the nature of smothered fire to break 



THE TENTH LAW. 



193 



forth; of an impure fountain to corrupt the 
stream ; of an envious heart to spoil the life. 
Eobertson says of the man who came to Jesus, 
asking that his brother's inheritance might be 
divided : " It was covetousness which caused the 
unjust brother to withhold ; it was covetousness 
which made the defrauded brother indignantly 
complain to a stranger. It is covetousness which 
is at the bottom of all lawsuits, all social griev- 
ances, all political factions. So St. James traces 
the genealogy. ' From whence come wars and 
fightings among you ? Come they not hence, 
even from your lusts which reign in your flesh ? ' " 

It would hardly be extreme to say that every 
other one of the ten laws has been broken 
because men have forgotten this law and allowed 
themselves to harbor in their hearts an evil and 
covetous disposition. 

Once more, envy reaches through thought and 
conduct into character and mars the man. We 
speak of some vices as the vices of noble minds, 
and of other vices as the vices of ignoble minds. 
We say of the one class that they can and do 
exist along with fine and manly qualities, and 
that although they show imperfection and are 
weaknesses, yet they are not fatal to character, 
while other vices are in themselves so base that 
they infect the whole moral nature and contami- 
nate the man. 



13 



194 



THE TEN LAWS. 



Goldsmith tells us in his "Deserted Village " 
of a gentle being whose failings leaned to virtue's 
side. We can all think of failings that not only 
exist in noble minds, but that lean to virtue's side. 
Anger may be the vice of an otherwise noble 
mind. Indeed, anger may itself be noble. The 
terrible wrath of a pure true man in the presence 
of a soulless villain who has wronged a child or a 
woman is noble. The stealing of a loaf of bread 
in a moment of desperation for hungry children 
by Jean Valjean can hardly be called an ignoble 
deed. Even lying may change its nature into 
something almost heavenly. When Sister Sim- 
plice, who had never lied once in all her life, and 
was venerated especially on that account, lied 
twice in quick succession to save the noblest man 
she had ever known from most cruel and unjust 
wrong and lifelong suffering, she did that which 
almost shines; and of which it was well said, 
"May this falsehood be remembered to thee in 
Paradise." 

We may even say what it is that makes one 
vice noble and another ignoble. In so far as a 
vice is selfish and aims at gaining something for 
self, it is only and wholly vile ; but in so far as it 
is unselfish and seeks to bless others, it is re- 
deemed from half its baseness and leans to virtue's 
side. Envy or covetousnesss is the one root of 
all selfishness and uncharitableness. It is sup- 



THE TENTH LAW. 



195 



posed by some to be the root of all sin and to 
sum up in itself all sin. Where it exists there 
can be no good, nothing generous or hooorable. 
It is perhaps the opposite of what we call honor. 
It pulls down the whole man and makes even 
what would otherwise be virtuous, mean and dis- 
reputable. It is fatal to character. Ingenuous- 
ness, kindness, truth, all the pure and lovely 
emotions are smothered in the heart of covetous- 
ness. Young people as a rule have a fine sense 
of honor, but these noble and generous impulses 
vanish under the degradation and bondage of an 
envious heart. It eats out manhood. Dr. South 
says : " It makes men believe in no God but 
mammon ; no devil but the absence of gold ; no 
damnation but being poor, and no hell but an 
empty purse." 

This tenth law, then, like all the others, is a 
law written in the heart and on the members, and 
made so much a part of man's constitution that 
it can pass away and cease to be a law only when 
man ceases to be man. In the keeping of this 
law there is happiness, peace, strength, and great 
reward. In the failure to keep it, there is ruin 
and moral death. It fitly sums up and ends the 
ten laws. 

If man is to bear no false witness against his 
neighbor ; if he is neither to kill nor to steal nor 
to commit adultery ; if he is to honor his father 



196 THE TEN LAWS. 

and mother and remember the Sabbath day to 
keep it holy ; if he is to hallow the blessed Dame, 
to make no graven images and to have no other 
gods, — then he must hear what Jesus said, " Thou 
shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart 
and with all thy soul and with all thy mind ; and 
thou shalt love thy neighbor as thy self. On 
these two hang all the law and the prophets." 
He must also remember the words of Paul, " He 
that loveth his neighbor hath fulfilled the law. 
For this, Thou shalt not commit adultery, Thou 
shalt not kill, Thou shalt not steal, Thou shalt not 
covet, and if there be any other commandment^ 
it is summed up in this word, namely, Thou shalt 
love thy neighbor as thy self. Love worketh no 
ill to his neighbor ; love, therefore, is the fulfil- 
ment of the law." 



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